


ACT I: Nazair

by kaeltale



Series: The Bonds that Break Us [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood Drinking in a Sexual Context, Canon-Typical Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Lost Love, M/M, Non-human POV, Pining, Sexual Confusion, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-06 18:22:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16392785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeltale/pseuds/kaeltale
Summary: “She had her own pack; the hansa that she grew up among. I lost their trail in Ebbing, but rumors led me to a sorcerer who sought a female bandit. I knew it was not her, but thought, perhaps, someone had mistaken Rhena for her…”“But then you found an empty ruin.”“But then I found you.”A tale of love lost and love found, of healing, and of learning to move forward.The first of three acts: Seven years before the events of Blood & Wine, Dettlaff returns to Nazair, where he gives Regis a second chance at life.





	1. Après moi, le Déluge

**Author's Note:**

> First, I am eternally grateful to my beta on this project, [Dordean](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Dordean/pseuds/Dordean). She's the genius who catches my mistakes, points out my inconsistencies, and takes my drama to the next threatening level. Thank you so much for all of your help, and for still being there after I dropped off the face of the earth. You're a saint!
> 
> This is the first of three acts I have planned, though it can be read as a separate and complete story. I don't have a schedule for the second or third acts, but I have some plot ideas I'm very excited about, so who knows!
> 
> Lastly, thank you to the Witcher community! Everyone I've met through this fandom has been an absolute joy to interact with. So much love and support can be felt from you guys (so long as no one mentions Triss vs. Yen). I hope you enjoy this fic, and please let me know if there are any tags I should add.
> 
> _Cover art by the fabulous[Namesonboats](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Viken2592/pseuds/Namesonboats)! Thank you so much!!_

_“Apa! Can cetsin!”_

Demanding claws pressed into Dettlaff’s shoulders as reality slowly flooded in. His bedding of straw and quilts was torn into bits of fluff on the floor around him, like some storm-shook bird nest. Seething oak planks groaned as he rolled to throw off his captor, but as the inky, grizzled face of a bruxa came into focus above him, he relinquished, still and boneless.

It was only Celia. Again, watching over him with eyes full of questions.

He breathed out steadily into the space between them, letting the adrenaline seep from his veins, and anchored himself to his surroundings. The bedroom, a blur of scarlet and plum, came into view between his mess of dark curls. Sunlight crept through the edges of wine-colored curtains, giving everything an angry glow. Even the shadows hummed with heat.

It was too easy to believe the illusion that he was crumbling into fire, as his mind had conjured. How had dream blurred so naturally into reality that he could feel it still? It was not natural for a vampire to feel any extreme of heat or cold, yet here he was, sprawled on his bedroom floor and drenched with sweat.

“Forgive me. It was another dream,” Dettlaff pressed Celia off to regain some semblance of space, trying to turn his thoughts to the present.

 _“Mlac-hinthaxe in mler-hinthaxe in?”_ Celia hissed, concern evident in her voice and the way she studied him.

He felt a tired smile tugging at his mouth. “You should be practicing your Northern dialect.”

“What dream does this?” She sat back on her haunches and motioned to the wreckage of his bedding.

If this continued he would have to sleep in the shed.

“A dream that does not belong to me.” He stared at the four-poster bed in the center of the room.

“You remember it?” Celia crouched down beside him, all snarl and shadow, and started brushing together the shredded quilt.

Dettlaff watched her fingers slipping across the unfortunate floor. His mind was desperately seeking to slip back into dreams, painting everything he saw in ashy film. It took him a moment to hear what she had said.

“ _Do_ you remember it,” he corrected.

“Do _you_ remember?” Celia mocked his accent. Her ‘y’s’ were still hard on his ears, but she was improving.

“Only fragments.”

Her fingers stilled. She was staring back at him, waiting.

“A human with a... disfigured face, laughs… and a terrible pain washes over me. As though I were being flayed.” He held his head in his hand. The pain had already faded, but the memory of it clung to him.

Celia rose up and crossed the room to hover at the foot of the bed, her features grim.

“What tragedy,” she said, staring down into the bedsheets.

Dettlaff stretched before joining in her. The bed’s occupant—a withered specimen of a vampire—laid there silent and unconscious. Dettlaff could still see the blue of his veins and the sickening yellow of bones and tendons beneath his thin skin. It was a vast improvement from the state Dettlaff had found him in, but pitiful all the same.

Whoever he was, whatever he’d done to deserve this, Dettlaff would soon be responsible for him… irrevocably. A consequence of this bloody resurrection; alike, yet different to the lesser vampires Dettlaff had saved. The bruxas, katakan, alps, and garkain were all predictable, malleable; easy to live with. He was unsure what to expect from a higher vampire, but it seemed that these nightmares would be a part of it.

If he had left the vampire to his incorporeal fate--a tortuous existence in the baffling void of a death that is not death--Dettlaff would have suffered many sleepless days worrying over him. In a cruel irony he was rewarded with a lack of sleep regardless.

Dettlaff took a clawed finger and punctured his wrist, then lifted the vampire’s mouth to the wound. The unconscious body reacted on instinct, gulping down his blood. It brought a strange sense of comfort to see life returning to his corpse-like cohabitor. It was almost endearing.

“This aspect has become less complicated, at least,” he sighed.

 _“Mlacaph zatlathas Eterau in.”_ Celia gave him a tooth, wicked smile.

“I did not ask for your preferences in my companions, nor do I appreciate your insinuations.”

“It is an improvement,” she chided, slinking away from the bed and out the door before he could protest. “Is there anything else to help with?”

Dettlaff wiped the corners of the vampire’s mouth before setting him back onto the pillows, and followed Celia into the foreroom.

“Actually, there is.”

Dettlaff crossed the hearth and snatched up a bundle of rolled canvases lying atop the dining table’s mountain of clutter. The displacement sent a cascade of empty jars, charcoal sticks, and sketch-filled parchments to the floor.

“I need you to take these into Dun Haag to trade. I’ll need fabrics suitable for clothing.”

“If you insist,” Celia growled as she took the bundle from him. She pulled her red cloak from a hook on the wall, and vanished out the front door.

Dettlaff cleared a spot at the table, and pulled out a blank page from under the mess.

It wouldn’t be long now, he thought while sitting down and searching for an inkwell. His moments alone would soon be few.

Quill in hand, he scratched away at the paper, putting order to his thoughts and confessions, recounting dreams, in ways one might expect to find in a journal. All under the heading:

_Dearest Rhena…_

* * *

Reinette took a moment to run her eyes over the menu with feigned impartiality, leaning back into the plush cushioning of her chair. The lavish Nazairi auberge brought with it the first sights and smells of her return to the provinces, if only just to wet her appetite, but this evening was not for pleasure. Not in the direct sense.

Cintra, though uncivilized, had served her well as an escape. It had been more simple than she’d expected, laying low and collecting her forces from a backwater village in a backwater kingdom, but it was now the moment to reap what she had sown. So much sowing—a lifetime, in fact—meant there was just as much waiting in reward. She could feel it waiting for her, too. In every golden gleam of gilded furnishings, and marble arch of elven architecture; in the whisperings of high society, and the scent of oak barrel wines—she felt the call of home.

“What wines do you stock?” Reinette handed the waiter her menu with a kind of deliberate regal grace. She was nobility and she was authority, just as she was taught. Nothing was left to betray her dubious history.

“Might I suggest the _Cintra de la Rosa?”_ asked the handsome, bearded man to her right. He was eager to show both his tastes as a discerning artiste, and his patriotism. She knew him simply as the Cintrian—one of her souvenirs. “It is a beloved choice among—”

“No, you may not,” Reinette dismissed him with a flick of her wrist. He had his uses, but he was no sommelier.

Their waiter straightened his posture. “We have a fine selection from across the Empire, as well as a handful of choice imports from the Northern Realms. Does the lady have anything particular in mind?”

“Do you import from Castel Ravello?” She asked.

“Indeed,” the waiter chimed. “We have Pomino and Erveluce in stock.”

“Erveluce.”

“Very good, _mejuffrouw._ ”

Another of her guests, a short leather-clad man with a subversive grin, spoke up from across the table, “If you want to impress us, you’re doing a good job of it, _dame._ ”

He was cheeky, with a thick Nazairi accent, just as the Cintrian had described him. The type to think himself clever. She’d have to keep an eye on him, though he would be broken-in soon enough.

“I’m glad to hear it, Cael. Remind me again why I am trying so hard,” Reinette took a pear from the refreshments platter and leaned on the arm of her chair, enjoying a large, juicy bite.

“I’ve sixteen men at my command,” said Ox, a broad man true to his name. She could tell he was the type who followed whoever held the coin purse, and asked few questions. The Cintrian had warned her of his biases against the fairer sex, but it played in her favor to be underestimated. He wouldn’t be a problem.

“We’re seven total in my hansa,” Cael winked. A mere seven, but each the finest of saboteurs. They came from various backgrounds of subversion, making them experts in preventing similar attacks—or in perpetrating them if needs must.

“Twenty-eight,” said the Iron Borg, who towered over all the others. He spoke few words and left the details to the imagination of his onlookers, like some horror-story monstrosity.

“Mercenaries of our caliber don’t come cheap, of course,” Cael said, while making a spectacular display of his knives. “We’re hoping your Cintrian was honest with his offers, for it would be a shame to have to carve a face as fine as yours.”

He was going to be fun. Problematique, perhaps, but she could find better uses for that insolent tongue.

“Condottieri,” Reinette cast aside her half-eaten pear and studied each of them with a steel-hardened gaze, “put your doubts aside and let me assure you. The money will come. What I’ve brought tonight is just a small sample of what waits for us.”

At a wave of her hand the Cintrian took three pouches of clinking coins from his belt and tossed them to the mercenary captains. She would not soon be speaking of how the coin came to her hands, but she knew it was untraceable. The ties she made on her rise to power would never make a puppet of her.

“In the case that I succeed—which I very much intend to,” Reinette continued as the men counted their florens—“there may be lands and titles for whoever has proven their loyalty to me.

“Do I have it?”

Ox lowered his head first—predictable—and tucked his pouch under his belt. Cael raised his glass of wine in her honor—oh, she would have to keep _both_ eyes on him! The Iron Borg nodded just once.

“Good.”

Whatever it would take, from this day forward her dreams would become more than fairy tales.

At last.

* * *

 Reality was lost. His mind was caught on ephemeral waves, adrift in a timeless abyss.

With the rush of the tide came an awareness that something terrible had happened to him. He knew he should feel, hear, smell, taste and see, but no senses existed. Only the abyss was tangible; a freezing web that held him cocooned from the world.

He sloshed through rippling memories devoid of context. Deeper still, he submerged into liquid paintings in which he could feel himself echoing.

The plucky chords of a lute were strung together with tales of valor and romance, prompting aggravated sighs and knowing glances from treasured companions. Aromatic herbs clung to him everywhere he went. There were meals of stewed fish, sieved through chainmail mesh.

A woman on the banks of a river covered them both in her blood as arrows flew overhead. The smell was sickening-sweet; repulsive, and thrilling but for her labored cries. That smell grappled for his attention and his heart in a single vice, but he had to concentrate. For them. His friends.

Friend...

A white-haired man pressed a sword to his throat.

“Well, go on,” he said to the man. “Thrust it in.”

* * *

Dettlaff woke with a start, pushing back from the table gasping for air. He looked down, feeling the echo of searing pain across his skin, only to find ink smeared on his hands and sleeves. No doubt that it would be all over his face as well.

These wretched nightmares had to end. He needed true, restful sleep, not this haunted dream-state that took him over any chance moment. He couldn’t even write without losing himself.

With a defeated sigh, he ran a hand up to slick back his hair. He felt like a misused sponge, absorbing horrible secrets. Though he supposed he should be thankful this time—the furniture was still in one piece.

As he reclined into his chair, a soft, low-pitched sound caught his ear. It might have been the chair creaking, but when he stilled himself the sound came again, quite distinctly from the bedroom.

No, no, no! Not now! He thought it could be soon, but not this soon. Not this moment!

He jumped from the chair, brushed the straw and fluff from his cotton tunic, and wiped futilely at his stained face. He must look dreadful—eyes and cheeks sunken like an elder, hair matted, unwashed, and unruly—and while he typically did not care one way or another on the opinions of his peers, this person, by their very existence, would mean something to him. They were _bound_ to mean something to him.

Perhaps the ink blots might hide his week’s-worth of stubble?

He frowned, silencing his thoughts with a hardened will. Nothing could be changed with the situation upon him. It would be what it was. With a resolute inhale of breath, he took hold of the bedroom door and crossed the threshold.

The glow of the sun had died down to an ember, and the evening’s light was curtailed by the heavy drapery, but the vampire in the bed was trying desperately to move his head away from the window. Groaning, he lifted an arm just enough for the air to billow in under his blanket.

His body shivered.

Dettlaff was at his side at once. He lifted the vampire’s weightless body into his lap, shielding him against the offending light, and for the first time Dettlaff met his open gaze.

Black eyes looked up at him, infinitely deep and shining like wet obsidian, and he was lost. Dettlaff felt weightless above him, his mind wiped of any uncertainties or thoughts or fears. He stared into a soul that was kind and clever—and broken—and all he could do was feel him. Feel for him. He felt something had shattered inside the glassy surface of those eyes, and it whispered to him in a familiar siren’s call. An echo in an empty cave; bottomless yet filled with sorrow.

 _Deja vu_ , Rhena had called such intense, familiar feelings—like a ripple across time; unsure whether it reflected the past or the future. Had he seen these eyes before?

“I know you.” The vampire’s voice quavered, thin and wispy as the rest of him, but the tiny sound of it crashed like a wave.

And Dettlaff was pulled into the tide.

“I—”

 _Comfort,_ Dettlaff fought frantically to engage his thoughts, his face wrinkling with effort. _He must be feeling confused, and he needs comfort._

“You are safe.” Dettlaff moved his hand to cup the side of the man’s withered face. “My name is Dettlaff van der Eretein.You are in my home, in Nazair.”

“Regis,” the vampire replied, before his eyes slipped shut once more.

Then he went limp, strewn out in his lap like some great stringy tomcat. Dettlaff absently brushed his thumb against his—Regis’s cheek, feeling out its bony plane. His mind was swimming with warmth, making the world outside fuzzy in comparison with the man whose life he’d saved.

And then, the moment dispelled.

Dettlaff drew his hand away as if he’d been burned. This person was supposedly a stranger to him. True, a stranger whom he felt responsible for and wanted very much to impress, but what was _that?_

Arms shaking, he moved Regis back to the bed, and retreated to his corner of the room. With a heavy sigh, he fell down to the floor and his makeshift bedding.

That feeling was… well, he had been intoxicated before, but it was nothing like the altered state of blood-drunkenness. Instead of being hazy, everything had shifted into a single point of clarity. It was disturbing.

Perhaps… perhaps he ought to put the room into order. Order was suddenly necessary. The dusty bookshelves, the tattered covers on the lounge chairs, even his ragtag nest were now an intolerable mess.

Not to mention that picture of catastrophe on the dining room table.

And when had he last organized the canvas rolls?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations:**   
>  _(My Etruscan probably sucks. I did the best I could with it. Dutch phrases made possible by[Embeer2004](https://archiveofourown.org/users/embeer2004/pseuds/embeer2004) (thank you again for your help)! Please feel free to correct me, or add improvements to my translations.)_
> 
> **“Apa! Can cetsin!"** \- Father! Stop sleeping (wake up)!
> 
> **“Mlac-hinthaxe in mler-hinthaxe in?”** \- A pleasant-dream or a bad-dream (nightmare)?
> 
> **“Mlacaph zatlathas Eterau in.”** \- More pleasant (Preferable) companion than the foreigner (human)*. _(I use the Etruscan word Etera—foreigner/slave—to mean humans, and Rasna—the Etruscan's name for themselves—to mean Vampires)_
> 
> **Mejuffrouw** \- Dutch: My lady, with a touch of hierarchical respect.
> 
> **Dame** \- Dutch: Lady.
> 
> **Après moi, le Déluge** \- French: After me, the Flood. Wiki quote: [A French expression, attributed to Madame de Pompadour, the lover of King Louis XV of France. The expression has two possible meanings: "After me, the deluge will come", asserting that if the revolution ended his reign, the nation would be plunged into chaos; or "After me, let the deluge come", implying that he does not care what happens after his disappearance.]  
>  I personally read it as "After me comes the flood", implying that a person leaves chaos in their wake.


	2. Pulse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta, once again, by the fabulous [Dordean](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Dordean/pseuds/Dordean). Enjoy!

Regis sank once more into the viscous portrait of a vaulted chamber. Stone columns flew past him, the air churning with ozone beneath his wings. A woman screamed in bloody agony. His ears darted forward, seeking her out.

His talons found the face of a sorcerer with a hideous, shrunken eye, and ripped. He shifted back to his human guise, searching for the white-haired man, but in that brief victory the sorcerer caught him between the ears.

Mouth gaping impossibly wide, he felt the blistering heat pour into his skull, and screamed an unearthly scream. Seconds felt like centuries as the world burned away with blinding lights. He could feel every inch of his skin as it peeled back into vortexes of ash. His blood boiled and his bones melted. All the while the madman who’d captured him convulsed with cackling glee. Oh yes, this was hell and the sorcerer was his punishment.

Over and over the memory replayed while his thoughts pounded against the boundaries of his mind.

_I'm alone. It's too painful! Why am I here? Let me out! Why? I'm so sorry, please don't leave me here! I'm sorry! Please let it end!_

Apologies poured out of him for crimes he couldn’t remember. What was left of his mind wished for the succor of the icy void before pain drove out every other thought.

* * *

Regis could feel his lungs shredding before he even realized he was screaming.

He was being driven by reflex—intercostal muscles constricting, diaphragm seizing—and he snapped upright well beyond the limits of his strength. Oh, agony! Though too tired to move, he was compelled to do so anyway. The fluid in his lungs was drowning him, and he coughed, hard, sending blood splattering into the sheets. He was sure the force would rid his body of its organs altogether as the pressure turned outwards.

He hung slack over himself, swallowing down air in gurgling mouthfuls while life flared around him.

To his right a thick curtain undulated with the currents of hot air, a billowing hematoma of purples and reds. Spears of sunlight poked from its edges, ricocheting off polished oak furnishings, claiming his eyes in the crossfire.

A hand reached out to touch his face, and Regis nearly shrieked. His heartbeat thundered in his ears and his body shook with lightning.

_No! Not the flames! Not again!_

His frail claws grew long, and his eyes bolted open in a surge of adrenaline and teeth—

But there was no laughing horror looming over him, and the hand on his cheek froze in place with only the slightest pressure. What he found instead were the pale eyes of another, wide and fearful—not fearful of him, but fearful for him?

“De—Dettlaff?” Regis whispered as his claws retracted, his mind in such disarray that he struggled to retrieve a name for that familiar face.

“I am here.”

The hand on his cheek thawed, thumb circling in soft reassurances. Another hand came up to support his back as he was gently led back down into the mattress. The light in the room carried a stabbing heat, and Regis pinched his eyes shut.

“Too bright,” he sputtered.

The bed shifted under him, and he heard a rustling of heavy cloth. There was a stirring of movement at his side before something thick and itchy was draped across the top of his face, bringing the relief of total darkness.

“Better?” Dettlaff asked.

The wisp of air that left his throat might have sounded like an affirmation.

But where was he? What was happening to him? What happened to Geralt? Geralt!

His body shook, and he felt himself being pulled into an armful of tenderness. A hand braced his blindfold as the arm cradled him. Everything felt like too much. Too much world, too much warmth, too many questions, and too little energy for it all.

Where was Geralt?

He felt the room spin, and the void reclaimed him once more.

* * *

“Do not forget yourself,” Celia grumbled before retreating into the dusky forest.

Dettlaff huffed and took the bolts of cloth inside. Celia’s aid allowed him to keep his vigil over Regis, but he got the impression that her assistance was offered more to keep an eye on him.

Regis had been whirling through various states of consciousness as his mind put itself back together, and Dettlaff would not let him go through it alone. Between episodes of deafening terror and silent exhaustion, he continued to care for Regis; readying him for the day his mind would fully rejoin the world.

He could feel the work taking its toll, but Dettlaff needed it as much as Regis did. It gave him purpose, and kept him from dwelling on all the missing pieces of his home. Even the panic was becoming part of his routine.

When Dettlaff returned to the bedroom, Regis stirred. No screams this time, only a ruffling of sheets and wide black eyes imploring for his company.

So it was to be one of those nights, it seemed.

Dettlaff grabbed a book from his study and joined him in bed.

He read in hushed tones, leaning back with Regis secured between his legs. The weight of him on Dettlaff’s chest seemed to ease the fears and worries in them both. He found himself trailing fingers through Regis’ hair as he held the book out in front of them with one hand.

A few pages in, Regis cleared his throat, and shimmied against Dettlaff’s chest.

“Are you comfortable?” Dettlaff asked into his ear.

“I’m… strained... curious. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?” Regis spoke carefully, without putting a strain on his healing voice.

“Of course.” Dettlaff put the book aside. Regis had hardly spoken since his first awakening, and Dettlaff felt himself comforted at the sound of him. Progress.

“How did I get…” Regis pinched the deep lines of his face, “here?”

The conversation was a long time coming. Dettlaff knew the answers Regis was searching for, but it would not be easy to explain.

“I am not certain of what happened to you. I found you in a ruin—”

“The castle!” Regis gasped, and Dettlaff held him closer.

“There wasn’t much left of you.”

He watched as Regis stared sightlessly into the empty corners of the room, and reached a hand up to stroke along his arm. It was clear how much death had taken from Regis, though Dettlaff could only guess at the details. It was an immeasurable loss.

After a moment, he considered taking up the book again—perhaps they could put this off for another night—when Regis pulled in a deep breath.

“I had been melted down in a fire,” he finally let out, shallow and grim.

Dettlaff nodded against his shoulder, flashes of those flame-filled nightmares resurging.

“How is that possible?”

“A sorcerer’s spell—a rather powerful one. How long have I been in your care?”

“Nearly two years.”

“Oh.” Regis didn’t sound surprised or angry or sad—just empty. “The castle was in ruins? You wouldn’t happen to know how long it had been in that state, would you?”

“Not more than four months.”

He could feel Regis tensing and he knew the news must weigh heavy.

“When you first woke, you mentioned that you knew me,” Dettlaff tried for a change of subject.

“Ah. That I remember.” There was a spark of sentiment there, something more pleasant that came from somewhere before death.

“I never properly introduced myself,” he crooned, “I am Emiel Regis Rohellec—”

“Emiel!” _Of course! Those eyes!_ Dettlaff paid no attention to the way Regis crinkled his nose at the interruption. “We were—”

“—We were acquaintances when we once shared a crypt.”

“I remember. In Ghelibol…” Dettlaff let his head fall back against the headboard with a light thud.

Cocky, mischievous, instigating, know-it-all—these were the words he’d attached to Emiel in his youth. The gnarled, time-worn vampire who was now braced against him looked, distressingly, nothing like the Emiel that Dettlaff once knew. It was clear the centuries had not been kind to him.

“Emiel, it has been ages...”

“It has.” Regis smiled, his eyes full of fondness.

“You’ve… changed.”

“I should hope so.” There was something almost smug, if not entirely bitter, in his words.

Dettlaff couldn’t help his curiosity. “You must tell me what you’ve been doing all these years.”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Hmm,” Dettlaff hummed with amusement. “With the stories you earned yourself, I would not doubt it.”

Regis chuckled. “I took up the practice of medicine; became a barber-surgeon, and settled in a human village.” His expression dared Dettlaff to either call a bluff or congratulate his creativity.

“A surgeon… for humans?” Dettlaff tilted his head. What clever scheme had Regis gotten himself involved in? “I see. You found a way to earn coin while you bled them out.”

“No!” Regis shook his head, his wisps of silvery hair tickling Dettlaff’s cheek. “You have the wrong idea entirely. You see, I had a bit of a run in with… morality.”

“Oh?” This one, he had to hear.

Bottle uncorked, history spilled over like fine wine, and Regis wove a fascinating tale. He bemoaned the downward spiral of his youth, that Dettlaff had fortunately not stayed around the crypt to witness. He cringed while telling of his shameful episodes of flying drunk, and of the miscalculated distance between a brick wall and his human prey. He laughed at his own embarrassment as he described angry villagers with axes and shovels and justified vehemence. It all led back to his home in Dillingen, and his summers gathering mandrake at Fen Carn, and then his words abruptly stopped.

Regis had been right; it was too much to believe.

“So you chose to live as a wolf among the flock?” Dettlaff couldn’t see the reasoning behind that. “I’d think a surgeon would be under constant temptation to drink from his patients.”

Regis seemed to struggle to explain himself, fiddling with his sheets and looking around the room. Dettlaff realized Regis must not expect another vampire to understand.

So he tried to. “It must have been a great discomfort to live that way.”

“It was the only way,” Regis affirmed to Dettlaff, or possibly to himself, as he dropped the sheet from his hands. “I did it out of debt, and out of respect.”

“For me, it was love,” Dettlaff whispered under his breath.

“Come again?” Regis had thankfully not heard him. No, that was unlikely; Regis had politely given him a chance to speak at his own pace.

“Do not mind me…” It was not the time to speak of such scars. “You do not drink from humans anymore?”

“It is my continuous endeavor, though I am not infallible in it.”

Dettlaff felt the implications of his words.

“Stygga castle.”

The way Regis recoiled spoke volumes. “How do you—? No. It doesn’t matter. That was… I made a grievous error.”

A silence filled the room, and Regis went still in his arms. With the threat of dawn spilling through the curtains, Dettlaff knew he would need to sleep soon.

He shook his head. There wasn’t going to be a polite way to broach this subject. Dettlaff held his hands steady as he sliced open a vein and offered it to Regis.

Regis studied the wrist with hard-edged eyes and thin-pressed lips. Despite the familiarity of the act, Dettlaff felt weighed down under this new scrutiny. He took a deep breath, waiting for the inevitable questions.

It would not be unexpected for Regis to be upset now that they were discussing the situation, and Dettlaff wouldn’t let himself complicate things with a storm of hurt and regret. If the situation were reversed, he’d be furious. In truth, he was surprised Regis had not yet shown his anger.

“This was the only option, wasn’t it?”

A hitch in Regis’ voice betrayed him, and Dettlaff’s heart sank. He nodded in response, unsure his own voice wouldn’t do the same.

“Thank you.”

Of all the things he’d heard from Regis tonight, this was the hardest to believe.

Regis was… thankful for it—thankful for _him_? That sinking feeling vanished as Dettlaff nestled his chin into Regis’ shoulder and wove his free hand back into his feathery hair.

When he brought his wrist up to touch Regis’ mouth, a jolt shot through his arm. Regis hummed delightfully against the tendons, and Dettlaff did his best to frame the sound in the context of satisfying a thirst.

No! Not that. A—a hunger, appeased. Fuck! An emptiness that needed to be filled. When did blood drinking gain so many inescapable innuendos?

That tidal feeling threatened to pull him under once again. It hadn’t returned since that first moment of searching through Regis’ dark eyes—eyes which were now draped in half-lidded pleasure.

His pulse leaped, and Dettlaff caught himself moving his free hand down Regis’ neck to caress the soft, new skin of his chest before freezing in place. He willed his body back into control—all parts except for one more mutinous than the others.

It was too much to hope, with the meager padding of his twill trousers and cotton tunic, pressed so completely into Regis’ back, that it would go unnoticed.

In enthusiastic response Regis bit down _hard_ , reopening the healing veins and sucking greedily—raising an alarming awareness in Dettlaff that he wasn’t the only one being affected by this trance.

Dettlaff pulled his wrist away with a cry that sounded far too much like grief. Struggling to regain a sense of calm he pushed back on the bed sheets, putting a good inch of space between them. His breaths came quick and ragged as he laid his arms out to his sides, and drew his knees up to keep Regis from losing balance.

He could feel Regis breathing with him, nearly matched in a frenzied rhythm as the delirium broke.

Regis was the first to stir, voice full of shock, “I—I’m not entirely sure what…”

Dettlaff sighed, “I did not expect it to be like this, either.”

This had never happened with the lesser vampires! Those bonds had been more akin to leadership. Something in his blood commanding power over them—a unique trait he seldom resorted to. His blood in another higher vampire though… was this what other bonded pairs had felt when they pledged their fates, or was this different because it was him? He didn’t want this. He wanted Rhena. He missed Rhena. He loved Rhena! Had that longing, in his days of solitude, somehow tainted the bond he’d created to save Regis’ life?

This was his fault.

Regis stirred, catching Dettlaff’s attention.

“Blood bonds, I’ve heard, instill a sense of relational permanence, depending on the connection between those involved in the bond,” he explained, as if logic might somehow dispel the dragon in the room. “They manifest all sorts of benefits, in addition to that imperishable tie between two lives; not unlike destiny, for lack of less whimsical nomenclature. Mated pairs, I imagine, experience this differently than those who share feelings of kinship—who would be creating a family-of-choice, so to speak. I’ve theorized it must have something to do with our nature as beings of a not-entirely-corporeal nature...”

Dettlaff stopped listening. He had little experience or knowledge when it came to blood bonding between higher vampires. There were no books on the subject—any knowledge was passed by word of mouth from the rare individuals who partook in them—but of course Emiel would be as close as any could come to being an expert on the obscured practices of their kind. Somehow, in all of this, Regis not only found words, but streams of them. It was overwhelming, and embarrassing. It was too clinical.

More to the point, Emiel had been a fleeting part of Dettlaff’s past. He knew him for such a short time that it may as well have been a blink in vampiric years. His feelings for him, even back then, could hardly be called a mateship. Emiel was… charming, and anyone pulled into his gravitation would say as much.

And Dettlaff loved Rhena.

“I do not see how this applies to us.”

“Neither do I, but the proof is in the pudding.” Regis turned, flashing him a toothy grin.

“I’ve heard the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” Dettlaff teased.

Shit! Was he now flirting with him?

Regis chuckled, but Dettlaff felt entirely too exposed by this mess. As much as Regis was trying to bring them back to a place of casual ease, Dettlaff couldn’t help blaming himself for this stimulating turn of events.

He lifted Regis up, slowly, apologetically—not to break him—and settled him on the empty side of the bed. Enough had been forced on the poor man without Dettlaff’s loneliness becoming a burden. It had, after all, only been four years since Rhena had been taken from him. Four years since he had shared this bed with _her_.

He would have to be more careful when feeding Regis from now on.

“Unless there is anything else you need…” Dettlaff rose from the bed, suddenly aware of every double meaning in his word choice. “I’ll… leave you to your thoughts.”

When Regis rolled over silently, Dettlaff took it as a mercy, and he made for the privacy of the atelier. He flew past the hearth, sifting through doors with smoky ease.

When he materialized, he stared into the empty spaces of his atelier, between the rolls of canvas and vacant easels. It was the furthest point from Regis he could be while remaining in the house. The state of neglect and disuse in the surroundings felt somehow appropriate.

Perhaps Celia had been wise in her pressuring for him to take better care of himself. Perhaps then, he wouldn’t have inadvertently been pushing his needs onto Regis.

Sexuality was no taboo subject to his kind—Dettlaff considered it as natural to discuss as what he’d had for breakfast—but the implications of emotion behind the act were something to be considered carefully. There was also the very important fact that Regis was still recovering, both physically and mentally. Neither of them were prepared for something like this.

And a blood bond was sacred. It was something both physical and metaphysical; reaching onto a dimension where nameless forces held fast, without regard to worldly contracts.

It was an immutable promise to another higher vampire that they would not face eternity alone.

He couldn’t risk his bond with Regis over misplaced passions.


	3. I Found You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta by [Dordean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dordean/pseuds/Dordean), the Queen of all things Ciri. If you like reading adventures with a certain benevolent vampire, and want to watch Ciri claim the ending she deserves, go read Dor's story; [Blood Ties](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10485585/chapters/23132316)!

Celia noticed when Dettlaff had started sleeping in the atelier. His nightmares seemed to stop, and he returned to old habits—some from before there ever was a house. He took to flying again, awake in the moonlight as their kind were made to be. He’d even helped find shelter for a wandering katakan who crossed into his territory. It was a welcomed change, and Celia fell back into her role as well; helping where he allowed it and informing him on the affairs of the lesser vampires.

Life felt comfortable. More so than it had been in years. Perhaps, she hoped, he would begin his work among the pack once more? It was a wishful thought, but stranger things had happened under his roof.

Regis took to nighttime reading while Dettlaff maintained the wood-crafted home. Celia noticed how his eyes traced every little movement outside the bedroom window with a deep dissatisfaction, and how his fingers twitched idly at the edge of every turned page.

Fraying, she thought. Higher vampires did not adapt well to cages.

Though the way that Regis looked at _him_ through the window was different—not the usual vexation.

Regis jumped when he spotted her watching from the bedroom door.

“It’s not polite to go around spying on people like that.” He composed himself, quirking an indignant eyebrow at her.

Celia smiled. His senses must have still been dulled to pick up on her presence so slowly. She slid into the room to sit at the foot of his bed.

“He’s out there every night, now.” Regis gestured wistfully toward the window. Outside, in the midnight glow, Dettlaff trimmed dead leaves from a nearby shrub. “A creature of habit.”

“He is.” She nodded.

“Pardon my curiosity, but I’ve been wondering; however did you come to meet Dettlaff?”

She blinked at him. It was an unexpected question, but there was no harm in answering.

“He took me when I lost my pack.” She stared out the window as Dettlaff wove long claws between the thorny branches to get at a wayward shoot.

“I’m sorry to hear that. May I ask what happened?” Regis’ voice conveyed sympathy and awareness; a vast improvement over Dettlaff’s previous house guest. So much less to explain.

“Witcher came to Vizima. He claimed my elder, Lily,” Celia spoke without hesitation. It was a story she had told before, and hardly an unusual tale among her species. “Of all my cryptmates, only I was left. A _Rasna_ , like you, is brothel mistress in this city. I went to her. She spoke to Dettlaff for me.”

“I see.” A strange emotion flashed across Regis’ face before he looked away. Perhaps worry or regret, though Celia could not be sure. “Is this why you stay with him still?”

She tilted her head to one side. “Yes and no. It is also what came after.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“He took many of us in his wings,” she paused, remembering the human words for her kind. “Katakans, ekimmaras, fleders, alps. All who were injured or displaced. The lost. Those able he taught to speak. He… obliges that we stay away from the _Eteri_ —humans _._ For our protection.

“I believe in his ways,” she concluded with a bob of her head.

Regis rested his chin in his hand, nodding along with Celia’s story. She imagined eggs hatching in his mind.

“I’ve only ever seen you around. Where are your packmates now?”

Celia shook back the bitter memory. “He brought someone to the pack that did not belong in the pack. Many left.” She frowned. “He let them leave.”

She felt Regis fidgeting on the bed, but her eyes were fixed on Dettlaff as he paced outside, observing his work. The gloom had taken him, as it did when he tended the garden. She could not see the point in it.

“Why would he do such a thing?” There was distress in Regis’ voice now.

“It is not my place to tell you this.”

“I didn’t mean to pry, I’m just curious is all. He’s difficult to understand, and doesn’t offer much assistance on that front.”

“He is… complex, but also simple.” She turned back to study Regis as he looked out the window.

“At times he seems open, self-assured, the next moment he cages off and retreats. He’s in conflict with himself. There are the obvious reasons for it, but I think it goes beyond our unique situation.”

Regis might have sounded frustrated with this puzzle, but she knew his look of frustration—his face showed her that this was not the case here, for the corners of his eyes crinkled upward and his black irises gleamed.

Celia curled her lips. Not _all_ of his senses were dull.

The click and thud of the front door, along with sounds of rustling leather, meant that Dettlaff would be joining them soon. Celia stood from the bed and made her way to leave them in privacy.

She brushed shoulders with Dettlaff, exchanging places across the doorway as he addressed Regis with an audible grin, “You two seem to be getting along.”

Regis’ words were blocked out by the swing of the door, closing behind her.

As she often did when her presence was unnoticed, she turned to press her ear to the wood. She could hear Dettlaff’s throaty chuckle.

“That is one way of putting it,” Dettlaff response sounded clear in his deep, familiar tone.

“You have a lovely rose garden. Nazairi blues! A breathtaking spectacle—quite marvelous under the full moon,” Regis’ inquisitive lilt came through like birdsong.

Silence fell while weight shifted on the bed. Celia knew the exact expression Dettlaff would wear to a comment like that.

“They are just as any other weed,” Dettlaff could not mask the gloom in his voice; she guessed him well, “but with thorns beneath their beauty.”

Celia had heard those words before. She knew they did not belong to him.

“I’m afraid I must disagree,” Regis chimed. “I find that beauty is more alluring when there’s an aspect of danger involved.”

The way he took on such a playful tone—

Well, she thought as she took her ear from the door, Dettlaff could certainly have found a worse mate than Regis.

After all that had gone wrong, perhaps it was time for something to go right.

* * *

Dettlaff sat in the corner of their tiny library, sketching at his easel, while Regis was sprawled out with a book on the lounge chair. He’d noticed how Regis had taken to writing notes in book margins now, and pushing out exasperated sighs. The sound of the scratching quill relaxed Dettlaff, despite the other’s obvious irritation with his own work. It was domestic.

It was good.

Though Regis no longer needed Dettlaff’s assistance holding up his books, Dettlaff still felt drawn to his company as he read. He adopted the quiet moments between them as an essential—a way of cementing the platonic nature of their interactions.

More importantly, Regis wanted him there. Their idle moments were reason enough for Dettlaff’s renewed interest in his art; giving him the perfect companionable pastime.

Tonight, however, there was a different tempo to Regis’ studies. He had been flipping back and forth through his book, always returning to the same page. A knot formed in Dettlaff’s gut, starving with questions.

“You’ve been partial to non-fiction as of late.”

Dettlaff heard the quill drop onto the page as Regis took his beak-like nose out of the book.

_“The Royal Lineages of the North,”_ he announced in an odd, reticent fashion.

“I cannot help but feel significance in it.” Dettlaff placed his charcoals down on the end table and tilted his head past the canvas to catch his friend’s gaze.

“Perhaps.” Regis observed him like a cornered hawk.

“Is it _him_?”

“No. Not him.” Regis looked down at the book in his lap. “Not exactly.”

Silence. Hesitance. Dettlaff knew the emotional scars of Regis’ death would take longer to heal than any physical injury, but he also knew it would be impossible to help him without putting words to it.

As the seasons passed, Dettlaff had picked up hints of the events leading up to Regis’ death. Never of what happened in the castle itself; mostly just names—little pieces of a _hansa_ —humans he spoke fondly of. Dandelion, Milva, Cahir, Angouleme… and eventually, Geralt.

Though Regis would not say the words, it seemed he had died for this Geralt; someone who, by profession, hunted their kind. Whoever Geralt was, he had left Regis alone there after such a sacrifice.

Dettlaff was fairly sure he did not like _him._

“When we left Fen Carn, we had a goal—his goal—his child-surprise, Cirilla.” Regis looked over his notes as he spoke. “At the time, only one of us, beside Geralt, had ever met the girl. When I saw her at Stygga Castle…”

Dettlaff reached over to brush up a few thin strands of hair that fell into Regis’ eyes. He couldn’t stand that broken look on the face of his kind-hearted friend.

“I’d like to make sense of it, somehow. I wish I knew the girl we risked so much for.”

“Did she survive?” Dettlaff let his thumb feel out the angles of Regis’ cheek before his hand fell away.

“I don’t know.”

Regis placed his books on the floor, and dug his hands into the cushion. Dettlaff fought back the urge to sit beside him. He couldn’t believe how much this gentle soul had been through. It wasn’t fair.

“Try not to dwell on it,” Dettlaff sighed. His hands were twitching on the arms of his chair, so he took his canvas and set it down against the bookshelf, then started dissembling his easel to give them something to do.

As he put his tools away, Regis fixed his eyes vacantly on nothing. His breathing evened out into long steady rhythms. Rest would do him good, Dettlaff decided, so he carefully lifted him, and took him over to the bed. Regis made no comment or objection. His body was starting to feel like it had substance to it, at last.

Dettlaff placed him down and turned to leave the room...

But Regis caught him by the wrist.

“Don’t go.”

Dettlaff tried stubbornly to pull away, but Regis did not relent.

“You’re tired, and I must try to sleep as well.”

“Please.”

He tried to read Regis’ expression, straining to find some moral guidance in their situation. Could Regis even know what he was asking of him? If he chose to stay here in this bed, it would mean more to Dettlaff than just a bit of comfort. There was significance attached to this human concept of bed sharing now. It would open up a door that he had locked tight inside his mind; a door that, once open, could not be shut again. He knew where that door led.

Alas, Dettlaff could deny nothing to those pleading eyes.

“As you wish,” the twist of the key fell from his tongue as he slid down on top of the blankets.

He tried not to tense as Regis settled at his side. He rolled around to find a comfortable position, first facing away, and then back toward him. Regis wriggled away, and pulled his arms up to divide the space between them. It was another kindness, Dettlaff understood, and he brought his arms up to mingle with his friend’s; a collaborative barrier; trust and respect.

Dettlaff relaxed into the mattress, but couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes to the sight of their braided fingers. He nearly jumped when Regis broke the silence.

“Tell me,” he said.

Dettlaff freed a hand and traced it along Regis’ worried brow. “The last time I shared this bed with another...” He swallowed. “Her name was Rhenawedd.”

* * *

Dettlaff draped an arm across his lover’s waist, pressing his cheek against her head. She was human, and he was not, but she gave the impression of a dangerous thing when she stretched out beside him. Like a panther, or serpent—something sleek and black to match her silken hair. He took pleasure in adjusting his natural rhythms to her human ones, sleeping with her by night; closing the space between their species enough to hold the illusion of commonality.

Her body was turned away from his, catching the lamplight as she thumbed through the pages of her book of fables. He only picked up bits and pieces of the story as he read over her shoulder, preferring to focus on the way her fingertips drew across each word. Though their life together was filled with adventure, nothing was as precious to him as the peace in which she was just Rhena, and he was just Dettlaff.

No bandits, no hansas, no schemes or projects or pack members to worry over for now—just her sacred heartbeat close to his.

When Rhena finally put the book aside and blew out the light, she inched away from Dettlaff’s embrace, gaining her accustomed distance in the bed. Humans, he knew, needed slightly more space to sleep comfortably than a vampire would. It was something he could not have learned without her guidance. Perhaps their fragile skin was just too sensitive to touch?

“Still reading your fables?” Dettlaff smiled as he withdrew his arm, catching a long lock of her hair to twist between his fingers. “There are other great works of fantasy I could recommend.”

Rhena adjusted her pillow and gently tugged her hair back beneath her head. “There is something comforting in them. They help me to remember the ways of the world.”

“The ways of the world may play out that way between a Fox and a Crow, but humans seem more complex.”

Rhena sighed, “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

The illusion never held for long.

Dettlaff knew there was no great difference in their species’ intelligence, nor in their emotional depth. Motivations and perspectives might change when one had infinity before them and the other did not, but surely this wasn’t another bridge they could not cross together.

“Could you teach me?”

Rhena shook her head into her pillow, and turned to face him. “I wouldn’t want to teach you. It would change the way you look at the world, like with bandits and thieves and other broken things. You are not like them. I want you the way you are.”

She pressed a kiss to his forehead. Her answer was disappointing, but the kiss was soft and sweet. Not being able to understand his lover’s world was a constant frustration for him, but she made the bitter pill go down easy.

He grabbed her, pulling her down onto him, and buried his face into her neck.

“Dettlaff!” she squeaked in surprise, catching her weight on his shoulder.

“My Rhena...” he breathed in the evocative scent of her skin.

She tensed, trembled, but then relaxed and traced her fingers down his side.

* * *

“She was your lover,” Regis asserted.

Dettlaff confirmed with a nod.

“She was human?”

“Yes,” he tried to keep the hurt from his voice, but it clearly wasn’t working. His chest was tightening, the heartache rising through his throat. Perhaps there was no use in hiding it.

Perhaps he was the one who needed to voice to his scars.

“Whatever happened to her?”

“She disappeared, not long before I brought you here.” Dettlaff closed his eyes, and drew a breath.

Regis squeezed his hand in reassurance, softly encouraging him to continue.

“One day she was there, the next day she was not; as though she had never existed.” It was still fresh in his mind, and confusing in his heart. He knew that humans did not live forever, but the sudden, possibly terminal, disappearance of a loved one felt so unnatural to him. “She was taken from me, and whoever took her left not a trace.

“She is the reason I was at Stygga Castle.”

He could feel Regis shifting his weight on the mattress, and Dettlaff held to his hand as though he could translate his pain more clearly through the pressure of his palms.

“She had her own pack; the hansa that she grew up among. I lost their trail in Ebbing, but rumors led me to a sorcerer who sought a female bandit. I knew it was not her, but thought, perhaps, someone had mistaken Rhena for her…”

“Being familiar with the bandit networks, her information might have been of value, regardless,” Regis added. “But then you found an empty ruin.”

“But then I found you,” Dettlaff softly amended him.

“I’m sorry.” Regis’ response was barely above a whisper, and sounded too much like a confession—

—and it cut like shrapnel.

Dettlaff opened his eyes to the sight of Regis staring into his pillow—his face pinched with thought.

“Do not!” Dettlaff felt his voice rising, but he couldn’t help it. Did Regis truly blame himself for their situation? Dettlaff would not allow that. “Do not apologize!”

Regis’ features hardened, the little broken pieces behind his eyes snapping back into place. “You’re right,” he said with conviction, “I know I’m not who you expected to find, but I—”

He pulled himself up to rest on one elbow, hovering above Dettlaff.

“—I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me.”

Dettlaff reached up to brush a thumb across his cheek. The skin of Regis’ face was still soft and new. In his caress there was enough distance for safety, but enough closeness for meaning.

Regis didn’t rest back into the pillows though. The bedsheets rustled, and the space between them was swallowed up in movement. Lightly, lovingly, Regis’ thin lips brushed against Dettlaff’s cheek. It was wordless, the language Dettlaff spoke most naturally, and it told him everything he needed to hear.

He wasn’t alone anymore.

Dettlaff pulled back from the chaste affection, looking up to read Regis’ face. There was fondness there, but he couldn’t risk losing the trust and companionship between them in a rush of romantic impulse. If Regis were to stop him now, he might not be able to recover with his dignity intact.

“Are you alright?” Regis asked, and Dettlaff remembered to breathe.

His hand was still hovering precariously and empty, where it had held Regis’ cheek.

“Yes.”

Regis settled back onto his pillow, drawing down Dettlaff’s hand with him.

“I…” Dettlaff whispered, “I’m grateful that we had this talk.”

“As am I.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter also uses the Etruscan words _Rasna_ and _Eteri_. Rasna was what the Etruscans called themselves, so I chose to use this as the word for "higher vampires" in their own language, and Eteri, the Etruscan word for foreigner/slave, is the word for humans.
> 
> Lily, Celia's elder, is a named bruxa from The Witcher 1 whom Geralt kills, along with her nest of bruxae and alps, while in Vizima.
> 
> The higher vampire that Celia refers to, the brothel mistress in Vizima, is the _Queen of the Night_ from The Witcher 1 (I like to refer to her as "Carmilla", or Mircalla von Karnstein, in my fanfics). She was also young Regis' lover, mentioned briefly in the books; though Regis does not know she lives in Vizima in this fic. Carmilla has the habit of taking in both bruxae and human women to work—protected, and of their free will—at her establishment. It seems to be an arrangement similar to Orianna's orphanage, in that the clients who come in can pay for services with their blood, but it's implied that this is a consensual act, and it is not done to vulnerable minors. Geralt has the option of letting her go in the game, and if he does, Carmilla talks to him about Regis's death, and thanks Geralt for being a good friend to him at the end of the vampire's life. It was really touching, and I wish it was mentioned in the other, more popular Witcher games.
> 
> The story that Rhena is reading in the flash-back scene is The Fox and the Crow, from Aesop's Fables. In it, the Mr. Fox sees Mrs. Crow with a piece of cheese in her mouth, and proceeds to shower her with compliments. When she opens her beak to respond, the cheese falls, and the Fox snatches it up, leaving her with the advice, "Do not trust flatterers." It's a bit of a playful easter egg for this scene, as Rhena goes on to tell Dettlaff how perfect he is to her.


	4. Silver Linings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: There's some _intense_ blood-drinking in this chapter. Also, some intense existential contemplation. What good is one without the other?
> 
> Beta by the lovely [Dordean](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Dordean/pseuds/Dordean). ♥️
> 
> Get thirsty, folks!

Regis actually _hissed_. How frustratingly vampire-like!

“Do not fuss,” Dettlaff scolded from across the room as he drew the curtains back, all tension and hard lines in his silhouette.

Regis squirmed and fought with the blanket, pulling the whole wretched woolly thing over his head. He felt his strength returning day by day, but it would still have been quite the exploit to hobble across the room and wrestle the curtains back from Dettlaff.

His struggles were earning him nothing more than sympathetic glances from Celia as she peaked behind his wall of wool and set a cloth and water bucket at his bedside.

“You haven’t an ounce of mercy in you,” Regis moaned, eyes pleading with the bruxa to intervene on his behalf. “Can’t you keep them loose just one more day?”

“I cannot,” Dettlaff huffed. “You must push past this if you wish to adapt.”

Regis could practically hear the edges of Dettlaff’s patience unraveling. He bit his tongue to keep from reminding Dettlaff that someone had stuck him in one room for months, and he could therefore throw tantrums to his heart’s content.

Still, sometimes it was impossible not to speak.

“It’s ridiculous enough that you must lash me to a bed like an invalid, but now I’m to be blinded as well?” he shouted as the blanket fell into his lap.

Damn, the sun! It was far too bright! The room filled with eye-watering white. He could barely make out the smudgy shadow of Celia as she bobbed her head at Dettlaff and fled the room.

Smart move avoiding this disaster of a morning.

“This is what happens when you antagonize sorcerers, Emiel!”

 _Emiel_. It was the name Dettlaff used any time he condescended toward him, and it made Regis feel 80 years old all over again; young, impulsive, and stupid.

He _loathed_ it.

In a rage, Regis brandished the book from off his bedside table. “If you wish to be cruel, I’ll take _Change Your Life: A Handbook_ and chuck it at your supercilious face!”

Dettlaff’s silhouette turned back to the bed. Even in the incandescent light, Regis could see the dark lines of his frown.

“I am sorry,” Dettlaff took in multiple spaced-out breaths. “I should not have said that.”

Regis deflated into his pillow. He was being foolish, wasn’t he?

“I’m afraid I’m unaccustomed to playing the patient.” Yes. That explained his temperaments, both taciturn and contrary. “But... this must be difficult for you, too.”

“It is nothing.” Dettlaff shook his head.

“Few could have endured as you have.”

“You endured years of solitude, and now this. I would be just as restless in your position.”

He sat down beside Regis and pressed a hand to his cheek. It was a gesture Regis had come to associate both with comfort, and the promise of blood running down his throat. With just that simple touch he could feel all his hostility draining away.

“Pish posh,” Regis sighed, holding the warm hand to his cheek. “I once suffered the grave for fifty years. Comparatively, this has been a weekend holiday.”

Dettlaff chuckled, “You do know how to get yourself in trouble.”

“Hmm,” he agreed, “but it was different back then—I deserved every minute of it.”

Dettlaff pulled his hand back into his lap, and a knot formed between his brows as though someone had insulted him.

“I wish you would not say such things of yourself, Emiel.” This time Regis’ name seemed not to belittle, but to champion him.

Regis held back his confusion as Dettlaff turned to the task at hand, plunging the cloth into the bucket and wringing out the excess water.

Despite everything Dettlaff knew of him, he somehow held Regis in high regard. Though he was an embarrassment to his race and a monster to humanity, Dettlaff had not only given him another chance at life, but had found value enough in him to justify protection.

If Dettlaff came to regret his company, even for a moment, Regis wasn’t sure he could stomach himself. Not after everything else he’d failed in.

When Dettlaff smiled down at him, Regis felt his worth in it.

“Forgive me for this intrusion,” Dettlaff hooked his free hand on the edge of the blanket.

Regis braced his fingers into the mattress as Dettlaff exposed his slender frame. He wore nothing more than simple pull-string trousers—something easily adjustable during his recovery. The blue veins mapping his body had nearly vanished, and the spaces between his ribs were finally filling out. He wasn’t a shapeless smear, but it would still be some time before he could walk unassisted.

Without comment, Dettlaff set about his work, using the dampened cloth to wash his bare torso. Regis could feel fingers slipping past the cloth, brushing casually into the sensitive skin of his chest. It was both appealing and entirely too intimate—another item for his long list of frustrations.

Regis wondered if Dettlaff had anticipated the sordid details of the recovery process when he’d chosen to revive him. For years now, before he was even conscious, he had been little more than a burden on Dettlaff; incapable even of bathing himself. He knew he should have been accustomed to it by now, but his heart and body longed for more than his mind knew himself deserving. He hadn’t felt this way since—

No, he didn’t want to think of that now.

Warmth flowed between them, yet nothing was allowed to come of it, and as much as Dettlaff restrained himself, Regis had also been holding back in his own way. Things he should have voiced, yet could hardly allow himself imagine. But this was life now, and the events of Stygga Castle had been a tragic fiction he’d read once. It hadn’t been him in there.

Regis fixed his eyes on the ceiling. The memories weren’t always so easy to will away.

“Tears?” Dettlaff cupped his face, gently turning his gaze back to him.

“It’s nothing,” Regis could feel his jaw clenching involuntarily.

“You do not have to suffer alone.”

Whatever barrier he’d placed against his own mind, it didn’t matter anymore—it was in ruins. Like the castle itself, his walls came crumbling down. All Regis could do now was curl around Dettlaff, bracing himself for the impact.

“Damn this helplessness!” He shook with all the anger, fear, and pain within him.

Dettlaff pulled him up into his arms, cradling him in that confounding warmth.

“I know.”

No, he didn’t. He couldn’t know! He hadn’t been there, flying through that blood-bathed castle, always a moment too late to save his friends—powerless in the face of their mortality. They died and had left Regis to live with his failure.

“I don’t remember!” Regis cried into Dettlaff’s tunic as flashes of white hair and golden cat’s eyes blazed inside him. “I don’t remember if he lived or died. I don’t remember if I saved him! I was there and then I was gone, and I still don’t know if my being there changed a single thing!”

Fingers slid into his hair, tenderly willing the pain away. Soft caresses instilled relief as tremors ran through him. When Regis’ tears emptied, Dettlaff brought his sleeve up to dry his face and pulled Regis down on top of him to lie against the pillows.

“I was too sure of myself,” words kept leaking from him pitifully as he settled into Dettlaff’s chest, wishing for some outside judgment to condemn him, “too damned arrogant!”

“It was not your fault,” Dettlaff cooed, never halting in his efforts to soothe through that addictive touch.

And Regis ached for more—more of that cruel absolution; more of that tender heart. He wanted to sink in deep enough to forget his pain, and taste the parts of Dettlaff that gave him life—that silver lining bleeding through his veins.

Regis could feel his stomach rumble as his blood rushed to fill his extremities, mixing two desires into one ravenous need. He closed his eyes, anchoring himself with the thrumming of Dettlaff’s heart.

They were blood-bound, but Dettlaff had not intended the erotic turn in their relationship. Regis wanted to respect that hesitation. If Dettlaff was not ready for something that, in all fairness, had been forced to the surface between them, nothing could be gained by pushing him.

For Regis it had been a welcome discovery, but inconveniently timed, with his inability to take initiative in their unfolding relationship. The world was so desolate with loss, but in that desolation this was the promise of a new beginning, waiting patiently for him to heal.

Dettlaff had become the one source of warmth in Regis’ tired existence.

In his reflections, Regis hardly noticed as the arm surrounding him flex tighter. Dettlaff raised his hands silently above them and pushed a clawed thumb deep into the valley of his veins. Regis’ eyes fixed instinctively on the hypnotic red rivulets that poured out.

The world seemed far away, taking with it every thought in his mind, as Dettlaff rolled Regis onto the bed beneath him. There was a fire in Dettlaff’s icy eyes; his pale lips parted around focused breaths. For a moment it seemed they understood each other implicitly, and Regis’ tongue flicked out to wet his lips.

“Please Dettlaff, I—”

Before Regis could finish his sentence Dettlaff brought his wrist up to his mouth, took in his own blood, and leaned down, gifting Regis with a crimson kiss.

Warm, thick blood flowed into Regis’ mouth like fresh honey, sweet across his tongue and filling him with vigor. In a frenzy, his hands found their way into Dettlaff’s shirt and skin, weaving up his neck and into his hair. He lost himself in the ambrosial waves that pulsed through him; the blood of his bound partner bringing elation to his every cell. Any of his feedings could have been like this had they let it happen, and now Regis wondered why it had taken them so long. He stopped caring how his body was reacting. He stopped caring if he was being decent or restrained or proper. He threw himself into the moment because, gods be-damned, he needed this—whatever Dettlaff would allow _this_ to be.

Dettlaff pulled back from the kiss to join their foreheads, catching his breath, and his face shifted subtly into that familiar bat-like form, abandoning the veil of his humanity. Regis felt a similar change ripple through him as he wrapped his thin fingers around Dettlaff’s arm and licked up the sensitive trail of his veins.

A satisfied growl spilled from Dettlaff’s chest into Regis’ flank, his heightened senses drowning in the vibrations.

“Oh, you like that?” Regis teased through growing fangs.

He bit down, drawing out the sweetness in volume, as Dettlaff gasped and shuddered above him. His eyes sought every detail of Regis’ face, as though he were something precious to behold—as though the sight of Regis like this, more beast than man, had value.

When he pulled back once more from the wound, Dettlaff stormed in to catch him with another messy, ravenous kiss. Regis couldn’t be sure if it was tongue or tooth that found him first in that carnal rush, for there was nothing chaste in it. Dettlaff was open and inviting, letting Regis test his practiced skills of tongue-play—or rather out of practice, he realized, as Dettlaff had him coming apart at the seams with his seductive licks and clever bites.

Regis rolled his eyes shut in surrender, letting his other senses drink in the contrast of soft and sharp, sweet and bitter. The blood and heat in the air had his head spinning, and a victorious voice hissed from the inky confines of his mind; _this is what you are, monsssterr._

Fucking hedonistic ruination, how he missed that voice sometimes! He should have been terrified; disgusted with himself. He should have been screaming for his sanity, but Dettlaff fortified Regis in his arms, and safeguarded him on his lips, and Regis knew there was nothing to fear in this decadent act. This was the blood his body was designed to consume, and not the intoxicating substitute of an alien species. This was the ecstatic fruition of his nature.

Dettlaff suddenly drew back, pulling Regis’ bottom lip with him before parting, and his hand slipped down between them.

Clawed fingers, delicate and unyielding, traced the arc of Regis’ ribs, down over his sensitive obliques, then skimmed along the crest of his hip, sending delicious chills through him. Direct, to the point, yet painfully teasing, Dettlaff’s hand slipped beneath Regis’ waistband before hooking around the base of his cock and halting there.

The expectation thrilled him, flooding his mind with need, yet Regis had to be sure…

“Dettlaff, you don’t have to—”

“Do you want me to?” Dettlaff’s voice was jagged and demanding behind his sharpened maw. His eyes, like Koviri ice, were a suspension of want and compassion.

Damn the beauty in those eyes. How could Regis say anything but yes to this man?

“More than anything, but you’re under no obli—”

Dettlaff cut him off again with a sharp, breathy kiss. For a moment, Regis wondered who was taking advantage of whom.

“I _want_ no obligation between us,” Dettlaff snarled.

And he understood; Dettlaff also wanted this, and all he required in return was honesty—though Regis thought he might have a few more words to add to that...

“But—Oh my!” Regis held back a whimper, artful fingertips silencing him as surely as any gag.

They trailed along the curve of his cock, reverent in their unhurried pace. Dettlaff stroked his skin with feather-light fingers, gliding like static-imbued silk. Regis could feel him mapping out his veins, learning the geometry of every sensitive nerve, building to crescendo with an aggressive flourish across the glossy surface of Regis’ glans. Pleasure-pained convulsions ran through him.

“Ah—!”

The cry that ripped out of Regis was perfectly obscene. He couldn’t believe the consequences of gaining a new body—everything felt new; virginal. It was not as though he hadn’t _experimented_ before—he was no narrow-minded ascetic—but the first touch of another was something else entirely. Or perhaps their bond had enhanced it somehow?

Further experimentation would be necessary.

Thankfully, while his body was appreciating things anew, his mind still had the benefit of centuries’ experience, and sex was, chiefly, a game played by the organ in the head.

Will and focus weaved into a purpose, and Regis reached up and splayed out his fingertips from Dettlaff’s jawline to his jugular, feeling the artery sing.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

He pulled Dettlaff down, tilting his head just enough to expose his neck, and licked a warm trail up his pulse. Dettlaff’s breath caught as he leaned in, inviting him.

The next bite sank deep; indulgent and instinctive and _absolutely_ vampire-like.

“Aaah!” Dettlaff gasped in pleasure, and Regis felt his voice more than he heard it, through the teeth buried in his neck.

This had become necessary. It was an affirmation for them both.

This was what they were.

Dettlaff twisted Regis onto his side, slotting himself into the contours of his back. The hand working on his cock constricted, rising tempo, as Regis hung on to the edge of thought. His world was narrowing in on Dettlaff’s slow, lecherous thrusts—grinding out longing with the sheer semblance of self-control—before everything exploded into stars.

Regis moaned through his orgasm and Dettlaff growled in tandem. Thoughts blurred into the stillness, and the symphony of lungs and racing hearts.

That was… it was all… fuck…

And they hadn’t even disrobed…

And Dettlaff...

While Regis laid breathless, waiting for words to come back to him, Dettlaff slipped his hand out of his trousers. Flawlessly debauched as he was, and somewhat recollecting that only he had climaxed, Regis arched back into Dettlaff, wantonly suggesting the next course of action.

Dettlaff nuzzled into the crook of his neck, muffling a groan; breath tickling Regis’ pointed ear.

“No,” he whispered.

Regis turned his head back, reckless in his disapproval, but all he could catch were dark disheveled waves of Dettlaff’s hair that had come unbound.

“Why not?” Regis’ mind wheeled into action. Did he do something wrong? Was Dettlaff regretting this?

Did he want him to… beg?

Dettlaff sighed, steadying himself, and Regis could feel his heartbeat evening out against his back.

“Not yet.” He pulled himself up on an elbow, and Regis could find nothing but exaltations in his mischievous eyes.

“I’m not made of glass, you know.” Honestly! How could Dettlaff put him through all this just to hold himself back at the last second?

In a manner that suggested not a scrap of shame or regret over their actions, Dettlaff brought his wet hand, glistening with cum, up to his mouth and licked a defiant trail through the thick of it—all while giving Regis a sidelong glance.

Regis shivered, the rioters in his mind scattering to the whirlwind of Dettlaff’s boastful smile.

“If we are to do this,” Dettlaff drew out after a pointed display of swallowing down his treat, “I want all of you. Every piece. I do not wish to hold back, and you are not ready.”

That damned, dramatic oaf!

Regis must have been pouting, judging by the way Dettlaff watched him with amusement. He grabbed Regis across the chest and pulled him back down so he could rest his muzzle into him.

Of all the particular traits of their species, Regis had never expected to be so flustered over the degree of sexual restraint that could result from four-hundred years of practice and a stubborn will. If Regis had even half of his full strength, he’d have Dettlaff on his hands and knees, begging _him_ for more.

“You know, you’ll have to clean me off again,” Regis taunted, finding any excuse he could to poke and prod his… well, he supposed, Dettlaff would be his lover now. Wouldn’t he?

“Hush.” Dettlaff smiled pressed a kiss into his neck, ending the discussion.

* * *

Regis hadn’t realized how much energy he’d spent, until he woke from his nap—feeling more himself than he had since his death—to find that it was nearly nightfall. However, that space beside him on the bed was empty and cold.

He pulled himself upright and searched the room to find Dettlaff standing in the doorway, waiting. He had tamed his curls back into their binding and dressed himself in a vibrant ruby tunic—far more elegant than his everyday attire. He held a length of fabric folded over his arm; taupe in color—silk brocade, judging by the sleek, metallic sheen and floral details. He smiled fondly as Regis sat and stretched the soreness out of his muscles.

“You look like the cat who’s caught the canary,” Regis beamed back at him. “What’s that you’ve got?”

“Not a canary.” Dettlaff sauntered over, unfolding the material to reveal an equally well-tailored tunic—longer than his own—with full sleeves. “There’s a chill in the air.”

Regis laughed, “Oh? How dreadful!” They both knew full well that the cold was no bother to a vampire. Then the implication of the gift struck him. “Does this mean what I think it does?”

“I haven’t finished with the trousers yet, so the ones you have must do,” he trailed the fabric around Regis’ shoulders, guiding his arms through the sleeves before working on the buttons, “but I’ve set some chairs outside if you’d like to see the moon above you.”

Testing the new dynamic between them, Regis leaned in and kissed him square on the lips.

Dettlaff chuckled, his fingers trapped in their task, but reciprocated before Regis had time to question his choice.

When Regis pulled back to read his expression, Dettlaff was still smiling, but now with heavy lids and a touch of fire to his bright eyes.

“You’re going to spoil me, aren’t you?” Regis sighed.

Dettlaff replied with a crooked grin.

It felt as though another man had replaced Dettlaff in the space of the afternoon; someone unreserved and playful. The kindness was still there, and he had always been gentle, but he’d lost that anxious rigidity. Regis’ heart fluttered with anticipation at the thought; they were no longer sitting on that mutually awkward compulsion.

A compulsion which, perhaps, still needed clarification.

The final button on the tunic found its loop, and Regis noticed that the sizing was loose—not ridiculously so; just enough for his form to fill out properly. In time, hopefully not too awfully long from now, it would suit him well.

Dettlaff took his legs and turned them so that Regis sat with his feet dangling to the floor.

“It will be good for you to walk,” Dettlaff wrapped Regis’ arm up over his shoulder and grabbed him by the waist.

“I couldn’t agree more.”

It had been a long time coming. Regis was more than ready to defy the prisons of gravity, having been sick to death of the bed’s safe and predictable monotony.

In one swift push Dettlaff had them both on their feet, and Regis’ legs seemed as substantial as two columns of bear fat. His joints ached and buckled out from under him, but he barely lost an inch of height with Dettlaff effortlessly bracing him.

“I’ll hold you, just try to move your legs forward.”

Regis tried. It was a grueling effort, but he could shuffle one foot in front of the other as they made their way through the house.

He’d seen glimpses of the house’s foreroom already, but he’d hardly spent any time in it, and as they crossed the modest space with steady pacing, he lingered on the details he hadn’t noted before.

There were frameless paintings hung on any flat and bare surface they could find—fanciful scenic panoramas and still life arrangements. The furniture of the room was sensuous, if not bordering on decadent, all carved of wood and adorned with ornate creatures, characters, and scenes—some of which Regis recognized from fairy tales. Colors were applied lavishly with deep warm tones, rich in purples, reds, and all shades of natural wood. It matched well with the bedroom he’d been trapped in, but Regis felt like he was seeing the space in a new light.

Dettlaff had made all of this for her; for his Rhenawedd.

With a shamefully anticipatory gleam in his eyes, Regis doubled his efforts to move. If Dettlaff were the type to work so hard in expressing his affections, Regis vowed he would work twice as hard to earn them.

When they reached the chairs outside—dark wood and bright crimson upholstery; the chairs that belonged to the hearthside—Dettlaff set him down gently into one and pulled the other to face his canvas and easel.

Dettlaff said nothing as he sat and hid himself behind his work, picking up a thin charcoal stick that had been set down among jars of prepared pigments. Regis took in their setting at his own pace, realizing the intent behind their location; his chair was impeccably framed by the fragrance of blue Nazairi roses. He reached up and cupped one in his hands, bringing its petals down to tickle his nose. They were far softer and more sweet than he had imagined while confined behind that barrier of glass.

In a flurry of feathers that swept in from the dusk, a raven landed on Regis’ chair, curiously poking its face into view.

 _“Friend, or foe?”_ the clever bird whispered in his ear.

 _“Most decidedly a friend,”_ Regis whispered back. _“How fares your mate?”_ He nodded toward a nearby pine branch, where another raven sat and watched them with a wary eye.

 _“Brooding, that one. He doesn’t trust strangers,”_ she cawed and cackled, climbing down onto his shoulder. _“And what of yours?”_

Regis laughed. Ravens were intelligent and observant, and quick to assume that any creature who traveled in pairs was part of a mated set. A bit of cultural mistranslation, but not entirely inaccurate here.

Dettlaff turn his head inquisitively at the chatty corvid, smudging over parts of his sketch and taking the charcoal back to it with gusto.

_“My companion here is having a particularly pleasant evening, I believe.”_

“What are you two gossiping on?” Dettlaff spoke up from behind his canvas.

“Our friend has come to give her greetings to us.” It appeared that Dettlaff had not learned the language of birds. Regis would have to remember that. One of the many discoveries he would make about the man, no doubt. “She also had an interesting observation on the nature of our relationship.”

“Oh?”

If Dettlaff had any resistance to the topic, none of it showed in his voice. He reached down and swapped his charcoal for a palette, taking swipes of paint to it with a knife-like instrument.

It might have been wise to simply let it be, but Regis knew he would find greater comfort in clear terms. Words brought an order to the disarray of emotions he was experiencing of late. Wisdom would have to subjugate itself to honesty.

“She dubbed you with the prestigious title of my mate,” Regis flashed a tiny smile, covering his nerves.

Dettlaff’s hands stilled only for an instant, before continuing to load his palette. “An honorable position,” he deflected, before shifting to look past his easel, and meeting Regis with a serious gaze. “Is it one you are comfortable with?”

Regis considered it for a moment as the raven on his shoulder flew off in another whirl of feathers.

What had fueled his earlier need had been, in no small part, a mix of blood and pent-up frustrations. His attraction to Dettlaff, sexually, was obvious, and would have been present even without the blood—in truth, it had been present when they were young, and it was no surprise that it endured—but this wasn’t the full extent his feelings toward him.

Dettlaff was compassionate, sensitive, and devoted. He cared for others, and he understood that drive in Regis in a way that few vampires would. Not even Carmilla had truly cared for humans so much as she took pity on them, but Dettlaff had always been that way, and Regis, perhaps a bit late in life, admired him for it. Deeply.

There was still so much to Dettlaff that Regis did not know, however. This turn in their relationship was all very new, and any definition to it would be terrifying. Their bond was an eternal thing, and Regis had all that time spread out in front of him to live with the repercussions of their relationship… but that didn’t change the nature of it in the present, nor did any present term of endearment bar that relationship from evolving along with them.

A rose would still be a rose by any other name, so why not call it what it was?

“I am, if you are as well.”

Regis watched the emotions materialize onto Dettlaff’s face like flipping through pages of a book: first joy, then doubt, finally settling on affection; eyes soft and vulnerable. Honesty being rewarded with honesty.

“I am,” he said, his voice low and husky and laden with future promises. “Though I wish to know you better.”

“The desire is mutual,” Regis’ sultry tone spoke promises of his own. “Have you anything particular in mind?”

“Your time in Dillingen, living among humans.” Dettlaff pulled himself back into his seat with his palette full and a brush in hand. “I’d like to know more about your life there.”

“It was… trying,” Regis relaxed into his chair and looked out into the moonstruck forest, taking in the soothing glow. “My summers alone at Fen Carn were necessary retreats from the scrutiny of town life. A bit of space to stretch my wings,” he chuckled to himself, flexing the strained muscles of his legs out in front of him. He would definitely be sore tomorrow.

“My surgery was located outside of the town proper, but close enough that patients would not be heavily inconvenienced. No neighbors were overlooking me, which allowed me some degree of privacy.”

“What of the people? Did any know what you are?” Dettlaff sounded genuinely curious, and Regis wondered how far his interests on the subject went.

“No, that would be too great a risk. The only non-vampires who knew of my heritage were passersby, and even they were few. I had to be careful who I trusted.

“For instance, I was friends with a flaminika in Caed Myrkvid, to whom I revealed myself after learning of her unprecedented views on what constitutes a monster in this world. There are, understandably, not many like her,” Regis trailed off, still raw at the memories of those precious few.

Dettlaff, unfortunately, caught the meaning in his silence. “Tell me more about your witcher. What was he like?”

Regis suddenly felt more the age that he appeared, but the truth was effortless—he knew exactly what he thought of Geralt.

“He was loyal. Selfless. A real martyr when he wanted to be.” Regis couldn’t help a solemn smile. “Once he picked a task nothing could keep him from it. He held others at arm’s length, but if you earned his friendship, there was no one more reliable in times of need.” His voice softened with the fond memories coming into focus. “Oddly enough, other humans viewed him as a monster, a freak of sorcery, but I’d never met a more noble human in my life.”

“He was special to you,” Dettlaff reflected, showing a delicate awareness to feelings Regis rarely considered himself. “As Rhena was to me.”

He realized that Dettlaff might be the only other being in existence who could truly know him, with all the context of their shared history and culture, and now even with the pains of his heart.

Regis nodded. “I suppose it's part and parcel for those like us. When we grow attached to humans, we know they will be gone someday—in two years or two hundred.

“Though I didn’t expect to lose him so soon.”

Dettlaff didn’t reply, concentrating again on his work, and Regis turned his eyes heavenward.

Countless stars shone brightly over the lonely mountainside, with a river of galactic dust between them. The glittering abyss seemed so close he could stroke it with a fingertip.

Whenever Regis looked to the stars, a part of his mind wandered unerringly into nostalgic and philosophical veins. Could those he cared for see the same constellations from wherever they sat? Was his home, the one his parents were born in, out there among those stars?

Looking out into something so obscure and so infinite was the closest experience he could find to a mirror, and in it he understood the human want for gods—beings more powerful than oneself, yet still painted with familiar faces, that guide their followers to what they should be.

If human gods existed, was Geralt being cared for by them? If a vampire were to die, both physically and not, would they find themselves in the same place?

Though Regis never found himself truly determined to find answers, his curiosity over death wasn’t purely theoretical. With life as tiring and terrible as it was for him at times—as it was for him recently—curiosity threatened to become something more sinister. A desire for peace.

There were times when putting back the pieces of one’s life became more tedious than its worth.

“I’ll go to Dun Haag for you,” Dettlaff broke into his thoughts, and Regis found himself being watched by lucent eyes. “It’s possible that someone may have heard rumors of your witcher.”

Regis sat up in his seat, his eyes wide. “You would do this for me?”

Dettlaff smiled warmly. He rose from his chair and turned his easel for Regis to see.

On the canvas was the most exquisite portrait of a raven, framed in the midnight blue petals of Nazairi roses, and crowned with the powdery glow of the moon. A symbol filled in every detail with the unspoken words behind it, and painted with the most thoughtful and tender of brush strokes—truly from the mind of a master, both in skill and sensitivity.

Dettlaff moved to crouch down beside Regis, taking in his work from the distance. “It is the least of what I would do for you.”

Regis caught his jaw, feeling the stubble and sharp edges, and pulled him into a kiss. Dettlaff closed his eyes, pushed his fingers up through Regis’ hair, and lightly pressed against his skull, holding him in place with covetous hands.

When Regis broke the contact, they were both short of breath.

“You are making it difficult to restrain myself,” Dettlaff groaned.

“It’s a fool’s errand,” Regis made no effort to hide the thirst in his voice.

Dettlaff grinned, bearing his teeth. Regis loved a challenge, and it seemed that Dettlaff was not one to surrender readily.

But neither was he.

“I’ll leave in three weeks. Celia can care for your needs. Dun Haag is the nearest settlement, but it is still a fortnight’s journey there and back.” He looked down at Regis adoringly. “Is this acceptable?”

“I hadn’t expected it at all,” Regis smiled. “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about that abrupt ending to the first scene. Dettlaff decided he was going to be a dramatic ass. I don't make the rules. (In all fairness though, he's right.)
> 
> The painting referred to in the second scene was directly inspired by the brilliant artwork of [Wehavekookies](http://wehavekookies.tumblr.com/post/172698496904/so-this-is-a-couple-of-things-dreadelion). I wrote this scene 6 months ago, the night Kook's posted this painting, and it pretty much wouldn't have happened otherwise.
> 
> Also mentioned in this chapter is Carmilla, who is the Queen of the Night from the Witcher 1, and young Emiel Regis' past lover; which he talks about in the books. If you're interested, you can see my interpretation of her character in the short story [A Vampire, an Elf, and a Dragon Walk into a Bar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12614564).


	5. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you eternally to my beta [Dordean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dordean/pseuds/Dordean) for all your help on this project! Your support and encouragement Mean. Everything. To. Me. :D  
> A special thanks to [merulanoir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merulanoir/pseuds/merulanoir) for their additional beta on this chapter! ♥️
> 
> And, of course, thank you all for reading!

Dawn threaded through the milky haze and the gnarled, restive oaks when Celia finally returned to check on the cottage. At the edge of the wilderness, she waited for signs of the home’s inhabitant, holding the prize of her hunt loosely in her claws. She scanned the brittle browns and reds that carpeted the garden, and it wasn’t long before she spotted a hunched over shape, burrowing through a newly raised planter.

Her approach had been silent despite the crisp leaves beneath her feet, and yet the hunched form stilled its movements and called to her.

“Thank you for coming back, Celia.” Regis turned from his work, casting aside a handful of stones from the planter bed, and stood to face her in the shadows.

There would be no more spying on him, it seemed. With effort, she hid the sourness in her face and nodded to him, stepping out into the clearing. He gave her a quick assessment and his eyes landed on the hare that she carried. When he smiled, she clutched it closer.

She was sulking, and she knew it. The deliberate warmth in his smile meant that he knew it too, and she wasn’t sure if that affection, in the moment, made her like him less.

“It is my obligation,” she clipped, as she held the rabbit out for him to take.

“It’s not,” Regis solemnly stuffed her gift into his satchel, “and I thank you, sincerely. You’ve been inerrant in your consideration toward me, during my prolonged recovery, and I never meant you any harm.” He grasped at the satchel’s strap in a manner that reminded her of chesty human lords. “Nor did I intend that you should feel overlooked.”

Despite the spinning of his words, she felt his meaning in the airy posture he took—the poor dear was guilty with himself.

Good.

She huffed, and glanced back over her shoulder at the wobbling, naked trees. In her contemplation of their bareness, Regis walked over to the steps of the cottage, set his satchel down, and replaced it with another empty one. His movements were of little consequence to her, but she couldn’t help noticing his brisk return to her side.

“Would you do me one more kindness and join me for a stroll?” his sharp grin pleaded with her. “I’ve been wanting to survey the local flora before the snows set in, and I was hoping you might lend me your expert guidance.”

“If you seek something in the woods, I will find it for you.” Dettlaff, in his absence, had obliged her by blood to care for Regis, but that didn’t mean she should have to amuse him like some weaning pup.

“There’s nothing specific that I require just now,” he replied, not giving up the hope of his offer, “but it never hurts to be prepared. If I could see where things grow, and learn what is available to me, it would be of an immense help in the future.”

Celia huffed again, “I do not know all their names. There is sankurum, though you must be watchful of the leshy.”

“Sankurum is a rarity, and valuable indeed. I’d find ample use, also, for belladonna, anise, and wormwood.” Regis’ smile endured as he held his chin in his hand. “What about mandrake?”

The glimmering in his eyes was as loathsome as his unwieldy words, but she’d found that his excitement often spreads like fleas.

“What is this man-drake?” She tilted her itching head, as images of scaly, winged humans filled her thoughts.

 _“Ina pomumas-cel tena etera, etnam acila fala eicrece eterasi,”_ he was thoughtful enough to explain to her properly. “We vampires are immune to the effects, but it can be deadly in the case of humans. The hallucinogenic properties are quite intriguing, though eliminated when properly distilled. I’ve found that they make for a—”

“Yes, we have these.” She noticed his lips pull tight briefly before the grin returned to them.

“Ah, excellent!” he remarked.

Then, without a command or a confirmation, he marched past her into the woods, and she followed the pull of his gravity. It was clear he did not know which way he was going, but as she quickly matched his pace, her influence took control of their direction.

Through the twisting trails of the deer and the wayward roots, it wasn’t long before the fragile silence was broken again, and Celia questioned why she had felt so compelled to join him.

“As I was saying before, the roots of the mandrake create a uniquely flavored distillate, and with a drop or two of belladonna extract, it has a wonderful effect on the rigid tongue. It is the scopolamine alkaloids, inherent in the belladonna, which—in the correct dosage—can relieve nausea, or act as a catalyst in unlocking those reticent confidences we all cling to. Both are an equal boon to the host who serves the spirit to his guests.” Regis continued, at length before tilting his head toward her. “A shame it hasn’t retained that same effect on our species.”

Celia stopped her head spinning long enough to pinch her brows at him. “What are you suggesting—”

“I suggest nothing, but you should know that mine is a friendly ear, which seeks only to understand.”

With an indifferent snort, she hurried to outpace him, removing herself from the range of polite conversation, and in her absence Regis started listing aloud any herbs they passed; celandine, wolfsbane, sage. Some he would stop and take clippings of, and as he remarked on each one, Celia kept a mental note in case he should request them again later. She had never heard their names before, but she knew their faces well.

“Is that vervain I see!” Regis buzzed with excitement as he and bent down to cup a fragrant cluster of small white flowers in his hand.

Celia stopped to perch on a nearby root, listened, watched, and waited.

“What a diverse selection you have out here,” he said, more contemplative, while eyeing her from the side. “You know, I’d never spent much time in Nazair, before now.

“Do you like it here, Celia?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “I have had little life elsewhere. Only here, and Vizima. There are few witchers who wander in this land. This is all I need.”

“Yes, I see.” He straightened up to meet her gaze.

“Do you?” Her reply came dripping with bitterness.

She leapt from her perch in front of him, and continued on the path. It was taking effort to ignore the angry voice inside her head. More than once this evening, she had wanted to rip out his throat for this freshly reopened wound, and yet he led her back to it now.

He knew her past. He should not be so dense as this.

When he caught up to her again, she felt the hairs of her neck rise, but her bristling seemed to affect him as much as the direction of the wind. With a heavy breath, she calmed herself and prepared for more of his loudness.

“If Dettlaff were to leave this place, what would you do?” This time his voice held the softness of concern.

Ah. So this is what he’d been after. He had taken the long way around the bush to get to it.

“You are missing your old home,” she spelled him out, and he smiled at her sadly.

“I had a trade once; a profession. It was something that brought my life meaning.”

“I am no fledgling now,” she shrugged. “Though I owe Dettlaff much, my pack is here. He has long been on the edge of us.”

He nodded at this, “So it seems.”

She was not surprised that he had noticed as much. After all, she was the only one who still visited Dettlaff’s home, and now with him at Dun Haag, rather than coming to welcome the newest litter of katakans in their territory, his priorities were clearly marked.

Celia looked through the bones of trees above them, to the peaks of the mountains.

“No eternal thing will stay unchanged,” she said.

“It’s as simple as that for you?” Regis stared back at her with worried brows.

“Of course this is not simple!” she barked, letting the false calm that she wore slip. “First he teaches us to fear humans, then he leaves us to search for one. Now he is being rash again! I do not think I can understand him as I once did.”

Regis winced at her display, grasping for his satchel strap.

“Because he went to Dun Haag,” he confirmed.

She shook her head, and stood firmly face-to-face with him. “Because he would do so for the sake of a witcher!”

A loud crack filled the woods, and Celia spun around to search for the source, completely abandoning the conversation as her instincts took over. Regis backed toward her, covering her where she could not see. In an instant they were swarmed in a tunnel of wings and the howling of wolves.

A gaping maw of sharpened teeth flung itself at Celia, and she blinked away from it with ease. Apprehensive growls circled in the bushes. With black wings pounding against her, she breathed in deep and prepared to unleash a terrible shriek.

Her shoulders rolled back and her chest filled to bursting, but Regis was suddenly beside her, holding out an unclawed hand in a silencing gesture. The wind left her lungs with an impotent sigh.

She could just make out the sound of him… whispering?

Another crack shook the air, and Celia spotted a great, lumbering tree swaying menacingly toward them from around the dense shrubbery.

“The leshy!” she shouted at Regis, but he seemed entirely focused on the storm of feathers that swallowed her voice.

The leshen stopped cold, appearing almost lifeless, and the ravens it commanded all settled at once—on the leshen itself, on the branches of the forest, and on Regis. Every bush and rock seemed to be carpeted in black.

Regis’ whispering was then accented with a charming smile. The birds all cawed in unison, the leshen vibrated along with their roar, and the wolf howls turned to playful yips.

Celia listened close enough to catch the tail end of a clever joke, and had to suppress her own snickering.

So Regis spoke to birds? This was more the trait of a bruxa or an alp, and even then, her own experience was more in the language of songbirds than the imperious cackling of crows, but she could make out his words as well as she could make out the long-lettered terms he chose in his regular speech.

 _“A misunderstanding, I’m sure,”_ Regis said to the flock, _“though if it wouldn’t be much trouble to you, I have need of any spare fangs your master might have lying around,”_ he lowered his head respectfully at the leshen.

The ravens swirled around him again, and dropped a few twisted spikes of bone at his feet. They looked like ivory that had been whittled down into finger-length thorns. Regis bent down, picked them up, and added them to his satchel of herbs, before giving the leshen a deep, elegant bow.

_“Thank you, my friend. These will help to speed along my recovery, and I will be in your debt.”_

The leshen shook its leafy shoulders in a dignified manner, and disappeared back into the forest’s fog, as if it had never been there. The thunder of wings followed it until that too was swallowed up.

When Regis turned back toward the path home, Celia once more fell into step in a companionable silence. As she processed what had just happened, one thought became loud amongst the others.

Regis, so much like Dettlaff, was truly a compassionate soul—to her, to the leshy and its flock, and to witchers, equally it seemed. More so even then Dettlaff, he simply wanted peace.

As they approached the clearing, Celia reached out to grab his sleeve.

“I know he did it for you,” she said without looking up to see him. “Going to Dun Haag was not for the witcher’s sake. You wanting this was not for the witcher’s sake.

“It’s right that Dettlaff should go with you, I think. That is what you wanted to hear?”

Regis caught her hand, and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“It’s good,” she sighed, letting go of him. “I’ve outgrown his coddling, and he has outgrown that house. I don’t want to see him trapped here any longer.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

She could hear the smile in his voice, but she turned to leave and did not look back.

* * *

Maneuvering within a human town was not new, or difficult for Dettlaff—even a bruxa or katakan could learn these skills if they dedicated themselves to it—but that didn’t make it any less unnerving an experience.

Dun Haag was not an elaborate town, and nor did it harbor elaborate people. It was a small farming village that had been established around the lord’s castle, and even that was little more than a meshwork of thatch and mortared rubble. There was a single dirt road running through the village that provided space for farmers and craftsmen to exchange their products, and, as required with any human settlement of more than two individuals, there was a tavern where they gathered to forget their sense of decency.

This was where Dettlaff found himself, night after night, sitting alone at an empty bench and trying not to draw attention to himself as scraps of gossip gradually filtered to his ears.

What he did not expect, however, was a pair of wide, frog-shaped eyes staring at him with interest from behind the proprietor’s counter.

He turned his shoulder to the curious child, but kept its movements in his periphery. The little boy swayed with interest on his tiptoes, dodging between the customers’ drinks as they passed over his head, before disappearing behind the counter—

And shuffling over to Dettlaff’s unfortunate tableside.

“Are you a vagabond?” the boy asked with his brows leaping up his forehead.

“No,” Dettlaff leered down at him, hoping to make an impression dangerous enough to stop further conversation.

“Are you sure?” the boy pressed on, pulling himself up into the seat across the table.

“I am simply a traveler.”

“Oh.” The boy looked him over critically, and Dettlaff shifted to adjust his coat. “But you’re not from here, and you’re all alone and nasty looking, like an adventurer but also not like one, you know? My dad says we don’t serve vagabonds here.”

The kid certainly enjoyed throwing that title around, as though it were the one-size-fits-all of descriptors. Dettlaff felt a smirk threatening the corner of his mouth, but he held fast to his serious persona.

“I’m not a vagabond.”

“That’s too bad,” said the boy, settling his chin on his arm. “You sure look like one.”

“Do you wish to see me removed?” Dettlaff pitied anyone who might try to force him from his seat, but he had no wish to cause an upstart.

“No. You’d just have better stories to tell. Them vagabonds always have the most interesting stuff to say.”

“Is that so?” he humored the boy, his own curiosity piqued.

“It is!” The child practically hopped in his seat. “This one time, there was a bunch of northern folk who came down looking all dirty and stuff. My dad said they were a _bunch of useless vagabonds_ ,” he mocked the sound of a deep, booming voice, “but they seemed a bit lost is all.

“They had all these stories about how things weren’t safe living up there in the north, and how the elves were taking over, and how the kings were always fighting, and DRAGONS!” He waved his arms in the air like a starved hatchling, and Dettlaff worried he might fall off the bench.

“It’s not like it is here. My dad says we don’t need any more problems, ‘cause the Empire’s at war again. He says Nazair learned the hard way, too, you know?”

“What do you think we learned?” Dettlaff grinned conspiratorially, hoping to get an elaboration on those stories.

“Well, my dad says Nazair wasn’t always part of the Empire, and that things were rough when he was my age, but it’s better now.” The boy dropped his head back onto the table, seemingly out of energy. “Is that what it means, being civilized?”

Dettlaff laughed through his nose, “I wouldn’t know anything about that, myself.

“Did any of those vagabonds ever tell you stories of witchers?”

If the boy’s eyes could grow any wider, Dettlaff would have felt the need to push them back into their sockets.

“Of course there’s stories about witchers!” He perked up, his enthusiasm renewed. “You know we don’t need witchers down here in Nazair anymore, because of being civilized we’ve got no monsters, but the northern folks aren’t. They even have witcher assassins up there! They say the Wolves have gone like the Cats did.”

Just then the proprietor circled from the counter to pick the boy up by his scruff.

“Oy! Laddie!” boomed the short, broad-faced man, who bore a keen resemblance to the boy. “Off you go now! Quit bugging the patrons.”

The boy’s frog-eyes bulged as the man—presumably his father—placed him back on his feet.

“Yessir!” he said obediently. “Sorry, I gotta go. It was nice talking to you mister…”

“Dettlaff.” The vampire gave him a tight-lipped smile.

Not skipping a beat, the boy hopped off toward the tavern’s cellars, and Dettlaff turned his attention to his larger look-alike.

“Is there anything I can get for you, sir?” The proprietor scratched his head, still watching after his son.

“I’m looking for a witcher.”

“Monster problems?” the man turned and nodded at him sympathetically. “I’m afraid you’ll be looking for a while then. Not many of them around these days.” He held his chin thoughtfully. “You might try asking the lord’s guard; they may huff about it, but they are rather lazy than tired.”

Dettlaff shook his head. “No. It is one witcher in particular I seek. I do not need his services, only news of where to find him.”

“An odd request. Not sure if I’ll be of any help.”

“Geralt is his name.” Dettlaff watched the man’s eyes grow wide and his posture tense. There must have been some confusion.

“From Rivia,” he added.

“The White Wolf himself?” the man leaned heavily on Dettlaff’s table. “You must not get out much.”

“I have something of a house sparrow,” Dettlaff smirked, parroting an expression he’d picked up from the townsmen.

The man smiled grimly. “How about you order yourself a drink, hmm? I’ve heard some tales, but they aren’t pretty.”

* * *

Dettlaff knew he could not shield his lover from the world, but it was another thing entirely to be the messenger to an assured wound.

As the sun shrouded itself in the treeline, and the thick woods of the mountain were painted black, Dettlaff made his way along the lonely path from Dun Haag. The snow crunched beneath his boots, and every step dragged with the weight of his heavy heart. The news would not be easy to tell. Though his heart yearned for Regis after the long journey, it bled in equal measure for the pain he would inevitably bring to him.

The timing was, perhaps, the most devastating aspect.

Regis had been returning to a point where he could care for himself again. Physically, of course, but emotionally as well. He was coming back into himself; his eyes no longer lost and sightless. He smiled—constantly—and laughed, and spoke and _spoke_ , and in many ways made an absolute nuisance of himself. He was an adorable fool, so much like the Emiel that Dettlaff once knew, but tempered by wisdom and compassion, and in every way the man he had always had the potential to be.

It would be difficult to watch this blow to Regis’ happiness, but without question, Dettlaff would be there to put back his pieces one by one.

At the same time, there had been an evolution within Dettlaff; a subtle shift in attitude like the rising of the sun. Curious thoughts had been sparked, first by his life with Rhena, and now in the light of Regis’ history. If his long life had taught him anything, it was that when the world whispered lessons it was best to turn an ear to them. Perhaps his choice to live outside of humanity’s reach had been… unilluminated. Were these creatures really so vile as he’d come to believe, or could he find peace with them as Regis had?

All this he contemplated in the evening’s cool glow, the forest peaceful all around him—

—too peaceful.

The birds and other voices of the night were silent, and the air held a chill beyond that of winter. Like the woodland creatures, Dettlaff could feel the presence of something insidious. He was nearing the cottage, and the possibility of there being an intruder set his teeth on edge and his hair bristling.

He shifted into smoke, focusing his keen senses forward.

Crunch! Scree! Crack! He recognized the sounds of footsteps, tipping through the snow-covered underbrush.

Two—no—three trespassers; two human and one elf—perhaps a half-breed or quadroon; light-footed in comparison to the others—crept through the brittle woods.

Dettlaff was far lighter. He did not touch the ground.

In the end, they were easy to spot. They dressed in various styles of foul play—dark greens, grays, blacks, and blues—but the clothing couldn’t hide their stench. They hadn’t seen a bath in weeks. Oiled metal and dried blood clung to them, and spoke as much about their drifting from the cities as their lack of hygiene. These were outlaws, doubtlessly, who would find a man of elderly appearance, alone in a secluded cottage, to be easy pickings. Dettlaff knew their type well.

In truth, their purpose hardly mattered now. Trespassers were unwelcome in wild places.

Swiftly, Dettlaff moved to catch the elf-blood’s neck in his gloved talons. She had no time to react. Her face twisted in fear and agony as claws sliced into her stomach, ripping up into the ribcage. Waves of blood gushed from her mouth in foul synchronization with the organs spilling to the ground.

The two humans were shocked into place, shaky hands grabbing at the hilts of their knives and swords. The clang and clap of leather broke into the silence.

Dettlaff blinked from existence, the elf crashing down in his wake, and appeared behind one of them. A clean jab into his spine, with claws aimed at the heart, brought about a death more quick and painless than that of Dettlaff’s first victim—the action directed by a need to be done with this unpleasant task.

The third man dropped his dagger and ran, screaming toward the clearing and the home at its center, driven by some irrational belief that a door could bring him safety—the door of a home he would have robbed moments before.

Humans had such fickle ways.

In another flash of fog, Dettlaff had his hand around the man’s throat. He snapped it like a column of chalk, cutting off the man’s last guttural cry. When Dettlaff released his grip, the body fell limp to the forest floor.

He took no joy in the killings, but self-defense was not new to him, and neither could he risk them running off to spread rumors of this place after a frightening display of his vampiric nature. As much as Dettlaff sought to find news of witchers, he had no wish to bring one to his doorstep.

A hesitant creaking of wood gave him warning, as Regis peeked his gentle face out from behind the cottage door. “Dettlaff, what happened? Do I smell—”

With the adrenaline still surging through him, a chemical force fueled Dettlaff’s approach. He shot across the clearing, silencing Regis with a furious kiss, pushing him back inside the house.

The need to protect Regis from the gruesome bloodbath outside spurred him forward as much as the need to lay claim to his mate—before anyone could try to rip him from the world again. Regis had died twice now by human hands, and although he was well capable of defending himself, instinct did not coincide with rationality.

Nor did Dettlaff care to be rational.

He’d missed Regis in the weeks that he had spent in Dun Haag. Terribly. The city’s wretchedness stuck in his throat and clung to his clothing, and he needed to wash himself clean of it with the taste of Regis. His mate. His blood-bound.

The door closed behind them, and Dettlaff trapped Regis against the back of a hearthside chair, his hands streaking into the grey hair along the points of Regis’ ears. Dettlaff felt out the hard lines of pointed teeth as his tongue forced entry and Regis relinquished to him.

He tasted like home.

After a blissful eternity of hot breaths and delighted humming, Regis tapped lightly at his chest, and Dettlaff reluctantly freed him.

“I’ve missed you,” Dettlaff purred.

“I can see that.” Regis smiled like a buck-toothed Cheshire cat, as his hand came up to cradle Dettlaff’s cheek. “But it doesn’t explain why there’s blood all over your coat.”

Fuck. The coat, his arms, the claws that had just swept through Regis’ hair… it was likely all over Dettlaff’s own hair as well. His thoughts flew to Regis and his struggles with addiction—this was the first human blood he’d come into contact with since his revival.

“Are you well?” Dettlaff searched Regis’ features; the red reflection in his black eyes was lucid and sharp, the angle of his ears relaxed, and the corners of his lips twisted up to mingle with the lines of his face.

“I’m fine. I’ve handled far greater quantities of blood at my surgery. So long as _I_ am not the one inflicting the wounds, it is far easier to suppress the stimulation of a mere exposure.”

Dettlaff released a sigh, the panic draining from him, and rested his forehead on Regis’.

“On my return I found trespassers in the woods. They’d picked our home as their bounty.”

“I don’t suppose you could have spared them?” Regis asked in a serious tone.

“They harbored ill intent, and would have brought the deaths of many who would return to hunt us, had I scared them off.”

“I suppose… a pity, though. If it ever comes to blows again, remember: I’ve a knack for speaking to humans.” Regis winked cleverly. “We often see eye-to-eye.”

Dettlaff smiled. Ravens and humans; both had an odd connection with his lover—one that Dettlaff couldn’t understand, but enjoyed watching in practice.

“I should… clean.” Dettlaff moved to pull away, but Regis caught his wrist.

“Have you any news for me?” He twisted his head, eyeing Dettlaff inquisitively.

Optimistically.

It hurt to see such hope in his eyes.

“I’ve… books for you,” Dettlaff dodged, with less tact than he imagined. He pawed at the brimming rucksack he had tied across his torso.

“Nothing else?”

“There were… conflicting tales.”

Dettlaff shrugged off his coat before sinking into the hearthside chair. The rucksack filled with various novels and tomes fell to his feet, bursting at the seams. Regis pulled the second chair around to face him.

“I cannot know for certain they are of the same man,” Dettlaff continued, watching the glow fade from his lover’s eyes. “Though he survived your assault on Stygga Castle, there are rumors he was later slain…

“There was a racial insurrection in Rivia—more a slaughter.” Dettlaff pushed the words out, staring into the crackling hearthfire. “Your witcher stood to defend the ghetto’s non-human residents, but a boy amongst the rioters stabbed him through… He was in the company of a sorceress—clad in black and white as you’ve described. She died with him.”

Regis sighed and Dettlaff risked a glance to find him crestfallen, his head sagging forward on his chest and his hardening expression more akin to brittle clay than solid stone.

There was little doubt in Dettlaff’s mind that this man was the Geralt that Regis had spoken of; a champion of lofty ideals to the end—perhaps despite himself—and a man worthy of Regis’ love.

Dettlaff cursed under his breath, his resolve to see the conversation through grappling with the pain he wrought. “After this, the stories became unclear.

“A migrant from Vizima claimed to see a white-haired witcher at the side of a northern king. Another had kin who’d settled in Lyria, and she spoke of an elven rebellion in Aedirn. A witcher had aided in the assassinations of two kings there. He is described as white of hair. Are there other white-haired witchers?” Dettlaff rushed through the details, watching Regis for the glimmer of hope to return.

“There may be,” Regis put his head in his hands, “but they wouldn’t be young. Geralt’s mutation was unique. Most witchers go gray at the regular human rate—if they should live so long.” His palms muffled a sickly sigh. “But I have a hard time believing Geralt would murder a king. He despised politics.”

Dettlaff leaned forward in his chair, lacing his fingers together over his knees. “A third war has come and gone.”

“I’m sure there’s much of the world I’ve missed in my seclusion,” Regis said with a bitter scowl, stinging with heartbreak.

“What will you do?”

“Now?” Regis huffed, sinking down into the upholstery. “Now, I’ll help you tend to the mess you’ve made of yourself. You look monstrous.” His smile didn’t touch his eyes.

* * *

“Do you think I’m done with you? You are done when I say you are done!” Reinette scolded the man trapped between her knees.

All through the act, he had held her by the waist like she was something to be stuffed and mounted to a wall. She happily played the part of prey, letting him drink his fill, but now it was time to reveal the true hunter between them.

With a calculated movement, Reinette leaned in to lick his gasping mouth, and pushed his hands up beneath the pillows. He bit at her jawline limply, not putting any real effort into the task. By the time she had her silk stockings around his wrists, he was just starting to come down from his high. A moment too late.

“I—” he pulled in a tired breath and cracked a smile, “if I had known this was your pleasure, I would have volunteered, you know.”

She could get used to that Nazairi accent in such heavy, languid tones.

“I enjoy an element of surprise,” Reinette leered over him as she crawled up to kneel around his shoulders.

“Now, lick.”

If he had an objection to her command, it did not translate into his enthusiasm for the task. Reinette crashed her hands into the headboard to find support against the lingual assault on her person. Any doubts she might have had at that quick tongue’s cleverness were washed from her mind in a torrent of pleasure.

“Ohhh, yes!” She groaned, melting into his mouth like resin, then turning solid and forceful against the mold of his tongue. “Much bette—ah!”

Boom!

The sound of a steel-clad fist, loud and demanding, pounded against the chamber door, and Reinette nearly jumped out of her skin. She rolled off the bed and reached for her dressing gown in one fluid motion, paying no mind to the protests of her abandoned plaything.

“Rein,” the Ox’s snide baritone breached the thick atmosphere of the room, but the door remained cautiously closed. “You’ll want to hear this.”

“You may enter, but I warn you! A man’s wages may suffer at a time like this, if he hasn’t a damned good reason for disturbing me.”

“Good evening, _juffrouw_ Rein—Cael!?” Ox started as he swung the door open, then immediately turned away from the naked man left defenseless on the bed.

“Good evening, Ox,” Cael taunted while trying to position himself prettily at the center of the sheets. For a man from Nazair, there was something of the Toussaintoi in him—grandiose and satirical.

“ _Mejuffrouw_ ,” Ox had to start a third time, his face red as a ruby.

Reinette moved to stand directly in front of the Ox, and tapped her foot. He was a good two heads taller than her, but she would not be looked over.

“Speak!”

The vibrant colors of his face drained to a normal hue, and he placed two steady hands to his belt; ever aware of the latitudes of his purse and sword hilt.

“The scouts _you_ sent out to Dun Haag. They haven’t met at their rendezvous point,” he grumbled.

Reinette didn’t miss his meaning. It had been _her_ who had ordered his scouts, not him, and now the Ox imagined himself pulling more weight than his worth. She would have to be careful of mutiny, but this was—in truth—very good news for their operation.

Besides, if it came to it, she would make sure this Ox found his purse light, and his sword lodged firmly in his back. For now though, a diplomatic approach.

“Is that so?” Reinette clipped one arm to the curve of her back, and held her tongue.

Cael called out from the bedsheets, “They should have made contact ten days ago!”

“There’s been no word,” Ox’s eyes flashed to the bed and back again, the vibrant color returning to his face.

“I see…” Reinette crossed the room to pull some parchment from a writing desk. “I assure you, Ox, that this plays into our favor. It means we have new options at our disposal.

“Cael?” Reinette turned to the bed as she scribbled at the desk.

“ _Mademoiselle_?”

Reinette suppressed a smile. She could almost hear the words, _by the Heron_ , in his dogged loyalty.

She turned from the desk and pressed her instructions into the Ox’s armored chest without a word to him. “I have a new plan for you.”

Cael pulled at his bonds. “Does it involve my release?”

The Ox cleared his throat and swayed on his feet. “I’ll… take my leave now?”

“What, you don’t want to watch?” Cael laughed, lewdly wagging his hips at the other man.

“Right… _juffrouw,_ ” He gave a tentative bow to Reinette, dismissing himself. “Cael,” he added with a sneer, and swept away with a slam of the door.

Reinette slithered back across the bedroom at an unhurried pace, dropping her gown to the floor along the way. There was a cause to celebrate now, and she did not want to rush.

“Where was I? Oh, yes!” She glowered down at him, standing beside the bed.

“Turn over.”

Cael’s eyes grew wide for a curious moment, before he obliged.

“As you wish, Reinette.” He twisted his wrists to cross above his head, and raised onto his elbows.

Reinette grabbed him roughly by the jaw.

“You will not use that phrase in my presence. Do you understand?”

“Yes, mademoiselle.”

* * *

Regis relaxed into Dettlaff’s arms, holding him close in their large wooden tub. The unfortunate bodies of their intruders had been properly disposed of, and the warm water did wonders to disperse the unpleasantness of the task.

Regis was genuinely amazed at how easy it had been to manage the bloody mess. Despite his assurances to Dettlaff, he’d often felt discomfort in the presence of blood. Tonight he’d had no qualms with it.

The only blood that sang to him now was that of Dettlaff.

Despite this ease, or perhaps because of it, his mind was freed to grapple with that last bit of information Dettlaff had brought him. Could there really be a chance that—no, as hardy as they may be, witchers were not vampires. They did not return from death.

Regis leaned up in the bath, twisting himself back to place a kiss under Dettlaff’s jaw, feeling the appreciative prickling of stubble and the thrumming of his pulse. Dettlaff pulled him closer.

“I regret I could not bring you happier news,” Dettlaff whispered.

It seemed Regis wasn’t the only one lingering on the subject.

“I think…” he turned around, letting the water ripple over his shoulders, “I knew, in a way. I hadn’t expected him to survive the horrors of that day; the odds were against us all. That he was able to reunite with his Cirilla, even for a brief time, brings me some peace. He’d succeeded in his quest.”

“I wish I knew such peace for Rhena.” There was no bitterness in Dettlaff’s tone—only his heart being laid out plain and true.

Regis took up the open palm of Dettlaff’s hand and placed his lips to it.

Dettlaff traced his free hand along Regis’ thigh, squeezing his hip, before he shifted out from under him and pushed himself out of the tub.

“There is something I’ve been meaning to show you,” he said, while wrapping himself in a towel. He turned and offered Regis an outstretched arm.

Regis nodded, took him by the wrist, and pulled himself up. After bundling up in his own towel, he followed Dettlaff to the study, and they sat together in the empty chaise lounge. From one of the bookshelves, Dettlaff pulled out a leather-bound novel, _Beyond the Mirror’s Glass,_ and opened it. Between the pages were stacks of loose leaf paper.

He took the papers from the book, and handed them over to Regis.

They were letters.

“Dear… Rhenawedd!” Regis started reading, and turned to face Dettlaff curiously.

“I wrote these throughout the process of your recovery,” Dettlaff explained, looking down at his feet. “It was… helpful to me.”

“Are you sure you want me to read these?”

“Please. In silence,” Dettlaff added with an attempt at a smile.

Regis thumbed through the pages, glimpsing the intimate struggle that Dettlaff had largely kept to himself. Some lines stood out among the others, catching Regis by the heart.

 

> _…That only I knew the true Rhena was ever a reminder of the exceptional bond between us; despite our differences, we shared so much…_
> 
> _…The memories of our adventures haunt me even now. I fear this growing awareness that I will not be able to keep my promises to you…_
> 
> _…Though I will never understand how or why you left me, it is clear that forces I cannot control keep us apart…_
> 
> _…I did not find you there, but the remains of another. An unfortunate soul. Rhena, forgive my gentle heart, but it seems that fate has placed him in my care…_
> 
> _…Perhaps you have already left this world, and that is something I must live with. I will not forgive myself that I failed you, my love…_
> 
> _…Wherever you are now, I hope you have found happiness, just as the heroines of your fairy tales. Goodbye my love…_

 

Regis dropped the letters to the floor, and took Dettlaff in his arms. That mirror Regis had searched for in the sky had been in front of him all this time. There was a kind of map in that stack of letters, a guide to the goals he should have had toward recovery, and an outline of everything Regis had been afraid to admit to himself since his rebirth. Dettlaff had been going through it too, right beside him, and neither knew it quite so clearly—until now.

It wasn’t until a tear hit his shoulder, distinct from the droplets of water dripping from Dettlaff’s hair, that Regis realized Dettlaff was crying—without a sound or shaking breath, and Regis let him have that space.

After years of silence and gentle servitude, Dettlaff could finally let go. It was over. For both of them, the search was over. Life could move forward again.

“Come with me,” Regis whispered. “Come with me to Dillingen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations:**
> 
> **“Ina pomumas-cel tena etera, etnam acila fala eicrece eterasi.”** \- literally: It is an apple-of-the-earth (borrowed this idea from French, lol) that acts like a slave/foreigner (human), and causes dangerous sickness to salves/foreigners (humans). It was the closest I could get to: "It is a root that looks like a human, and is poisonous to humans." XD
> 
> Thank you again to [Embeer2004](https://archiveofourown.org/users/embeer2004/pseuds/embeer2004) for their help with the Dutch. Translations are the same as in Ch. 1.


End file.
